Emotional avoidance and rumination as mediators of the relation between adult attachment and emotional disclosure

• We examined the mediation between attachment and emotional disclosure.
• Generalized self-reports and multiple daily reports were collected.
• Expressive suppression mediated attachment avoidance and disclosure tendencies.
• Attachment anxiety was positively related to generalized rumination.
• Rumination about daily events was associated with disclosure of those events.

The authors evaluated emotional avoidance as a mediator of the relation between attachment avoidance (i.e., fear of dependency) and emotional disclosure and rumination as a mediator of the relation between attachment anxiety (i.e., fear of rejection) and emotional disclosure. Two operational definitions were used for each of three variables – emotional avoidance, rumination, and emotional disclosure – such that hypotheses were tested on generalized self-appraisals and responses to specific emotional events. College students (N = 116) first completed generalized self-report measures of attachment, expressive suppression (i.e., emotional avoidance), rumination, and emotional-disclosure tendencies. Then, during a 7-day diary study, they provided daily reports of emotional avoidance, rumination, and disclosure concerning the day’s most unpleasant event. Attachment avoidance was negatively related to disclosure tendencies and daily-event disclosure; emotional avoidance was supported as a mediator in the generalized self-report analyses. Attachment anxiety was positively related to both measures of rumination, and daily-event rumination was positively related to daily-event disclosure, but mediation was not supported in either analysis. The findings suggest implications for theories of attachment and emotion regulation.