A Replication Study on the Influences of Adult Attachment Style and Recalling　Rejection Experiences on Perception of Pain from Emotional Bullying

摘要

This study was replication research from Izaki, Taniguchi, & Ura's study (2013), and examined whether adult attachment style and recalling past rejection experiences have interaction effects on the perceived pain of emotional bullying at school. Participants were 87 undergraduate students, and were tested individually via a computer program. First, they completed the ECR-GO (Nakao & Kato, 2004) which assesses two dimensions of adult attachment style, anxiety and avoidance. Second, they were randomly assigned to respond to one of two sets of brief, open-ended questions about a past experience of rejection or taking a next important examination. Third, participants read a scenario involving emotional bullying at school and estimated the severity of the bullying with the Faces Pain Scale (Bieri et al., 1990). There were significant interaction effects between recalling condition and avoidance on the severity of the bullying by many classmates and by a specific student. In the exclusion condition, high avoidant participants estimated the bullying to be less severe than low avoidant participants, but in the test condition, high and low avoidant participants did not differ in the severity of the bullying.