The Association Between Attachment And Conflict Resolution During Friendship Conflict Among College Students

This study is about college students' attachment to friends and how conflict resolution is related to the level of attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance. Studies have found low attachment anxiety and low attachment avoidance to be related to effective coping strategies and to the compromising conflict resolution style. Many studies have focused on how participants generally resolve conflict. The current study is focused on how participants have actually resolved conflict and how they believe they would resolve conflict in a hypothetical situation. Participants answered if they could think of a conflict with a friend in the past 6 months and wrote about a conflict if they answered yes and read a simulated conflict if they answered no. Participants completed an attachment measure, a conflict resolution measure, and rated how severe they experienced the conflict. Attachment anxiety was positively related to the obliging and compromising conflict resolution styles, and attachment avoidance was positively related to the avoiding conflict resolution style in the real-life conflict sample. Attachment anxiety was positively related to the obliging and avoiding conflict resolution styles, and attachment avoidance was positively related to the avoiding conflict resolution style in the simulated-conflict sample. People high in attachment anxiety are likely to please their friend for fear the friend would leave them. People high in attachment avoidance are likely to withdraw from conflict.