Poster #86 - Effects of Ambient Parental Attachment Style on Children’s Trust Decisions

• In Event: Poster Session 14

Abstract

Trust is a major determining factor in the conduct of interpersonal relationships, and decisions regarding whom to trust assist in the necessary maintenance and pruning of these relationships. Two major determinants of trust are the veracity (truth/lie) and intention (benevolence/malevolence) of intimate partners’ previous utterances. Pilot data has revealed that the weight of these determinants shifts in childhood and particularly during the critical ages of four- to seven-years-of-age (Yee et al., 2022; Shao et al., 2022). Alongside a general developmental socio-cognitive trend, many contextual factors influence the propensity to trust others, including ambient attachment styles. For example, parental warmth, a proxy for secure parent-child attachment, has been shown to correlate with trust in peers and close others (Liu & Wang, 2021; Umemura & Šerek, 2016). However, little is known about the intergenerational transmission of trust – how do parents’ individual characteristics (e.g., attachment style) affect their children’s trust in different situations? Utilizing Bartholomew et al.’s (1991) quadrant-system of attachment styles, this study presents preliminary findings of associations between parental attachment style on children’s trust judgements considering veracity and intention.
We recruited 30 5- to 11-year-olds online, Mage = 8.06, SD = 2.17, mostly Euro- and Asian-Canadians. Parents self-identified their attachment styles, which were divided into secure (n = 21) and insecure (dismissing, preoccupied, and fearful: n = 9). Mann-Whitney tests revealed no significant differences (.33 < p < .70) between the children’s trust of others and these parents’ attachment style groupings. However, qualitative trends were observed: Children whose parents reported positive attachment security appeared to show less trust in the kind truth-teller, lie-teller, and mean truth-teller than those reporting less secure attachment styles, while the opposite is true for judgements of the mean-lie teller. Additionally, children of parents reporting less positive attachment security seemed more responsive to changes in both veracity and benevolence compared to children with parents reporting strong attachment security.
Deciding who to trust is critical for children’s survival in the social world. Previous research has demonstrated the important roles of parents and family context in children’s
development of trust. In this exploratory study, we focused on how parents’ attachment styles are associated with their children’s trust in others. We found that children whose parents are less securely attached may be more sensitive when judging people’s trustworthiness – they judged kind individuals (regardless of telling the truth or a lie) and the mean truth-teller more favorably and rated the mean lie-teller more negatively compared to those with securely attached parents. We also found that children whose parents were less attached were more responsive to both veracity and intention dimensions when reasoning about trustworthiness. It is worth noting that, however, the sample size in the current dataset is relatively small, and we expect to present analyses of data from 48 participants at SRCD. In sum, this exploratory research provides a novel perspective on understanding the development of interpersonal trust, potentially providing evidence for the impact of parental characteristics on children’s social development.

Authors

• Yan Hui Yee, University of British Columbia (UBC)
  Presenting Author

• Zexuan Mu

• Shuai Shao, University of California - San Diego

• Catherine Ann Cameron, University of British Columbia (UBC)