Getting close from far away: Mediators of the association between attachment and blogging behavior

• Attachment is a meaningful construct for understanding blogging behavior.
• Attachment anxiety is positively related to blogging intensity.
• Attachment anxiety predicts being motivated to blog by personal and interpersonal needs.
• Avoidant attachment is negatively related to blogging intensity.
• Attachment avoidance is related to the tendency to maintain an anonymous blog.

Since their inception in the 1990s, blogs continue to play a major role in online culture, having increased fivefold in the last six years. Blogs may serve unique functions for individuals with higher levels of attachment avoidance and anxiety. The study tests a theoretically grounded mediational model of the associations between attachment anxiety and avoidance with the outcome variable of blogging intensity. Desired anonymity and motivations for blogging are proposed to mediate that relationship. One hundred and forty-three adult bloggers completed online questionnaires that contained standard measures of attachment anxiety and avoidance (ECR; Brennan, Clark, & Shaver, 1998) and measures of blogging behavior developed for the study. Path analysis was used to test the meditational model. The meditational hypotheses were partially supported. Attachment anxiety was related to greater blogging intensity, and personal and interpersonal motivational factors mediated this relationship. Attachment avoidance was associated with lower levels of blogging intensity and higher levels of anonymity, but anonymity did not mediate the relationship between attachment avoidance and blogging intensity. The findings suggest that attachment offers a useful lens for understanding online behavior and how it meets interpersonal needs.