Examining the interactive effects of attachment style and relationship nostalgia on relationship quality

Abstract

Nostalgia, a sentimental longing for the past, is beneficial for romantic relationship well-being. The opposite is true, however, for more avoidantly attached persons. Nonetheless, no research has examined how attachment styles interact with relationship-specific nostalgic primes to affect relationship quality. To address this gap, participants in Study 1 completed a relationship nostalgia (or control) writing task. Results showed that persons who scored high on attachment avoidance and low on attachment anxiety reported lower partner commitment when they were primed with relationship nostalgia. Studies 2 and 3 built on this finding by priming relationship nostalgia through music. In Study 2, highly avoidantly and anxiously attached participants reported lower partner commitment when they listened to relationship nostalgic songs, relative to control songs. Finally, in Study 3, participants either listened to nostalgic songs alone, nostalgic songs with their partner, or control songs with their partner. In the preliminary results, the nostalgia-together and nostalgia-alone conditions produced similar relationship quality outcomes (e.g., state attachment security), but both scored higher than the control-together condition, especially when measuring relationship certainty. Across the three studies, the data suggest that a sentimental longing for the past of a romantic relationship – whether experienced through writing, listening to nostalgic music alone, or listening to nostalgic music with a partner – is a predominantly positive experience, but not for the avoidantly attached.