Do people who avoid closeness keep more sugar in their blood?
People who tend to avoid relying on others had higher fasting blood sugar and took more sugary food, especially when reminded of going it alone or after a shared stressful task.
Source
Sugarcoated isolation: evidence that social avoidance is linked to higher basal glucose levels and higher consumption of glucose
Study at a glance
- Design
- Human experiment — Multi-study paper: two correlational studies linking attachment avoidance to fasting glucose, then two lab experiments manipulating asocial state or social context and measuring sugary food taken.
- N
- N=285 · Study 1: 60 undergraduate women; Study 2: 285 Israeli adults aged 42-90 (largest sample, used as n); Studies 3 and 4: separate samples of Israeli students (just over a hundred each).
- Population
- US undergraduate women, Israeli middle-aged and older adults, and Israeli university students
- Outcome
- Fasting blood glucose (Studies 1-2); chocolate chunks eaten and weight of sugary cereal poured (Studies 3-4)
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
What they did
In Study 1, 60 young women rated their attachment avoidance and gave a finger-prick blood glucose sample after fasting. Study 2 repeated this with 285 older Israeli adults, adding controls for age, BMI, social support and three stress indicators (self-reported anxiety, hypertension, cortisol/DHEA ratio). Study 3 randomly assigned students to read an 'asocial' or neutral story and counted chocolate chunks eaten; Study 4 had students do a cold-water stress task alone or in pairs and weighed the sugary cereal they poured.
What they found
Higher attachment avoidance predicted higher fasting glucose in both correlational studies, and in Study 2 this held after adjusting for stress markers, which did not mediate the link; avoidance was not tied to diabetes or obesity. In Study 3, the asocial story increased chocolate eating, but mainly among highly avoidant people. In Study 4, avoidance predicted pouring more cereal only in the paired condition. Attachment anxiety did not show the same pattern and was linked to eating fewer chocolate chunks.
The limits
What it doesn't show
Studies 1 and 2 are correlational, so they cannot show that avoidance causes higher glucose; the authors lean on theory and the later experiments to argue direction. The experiments manipulated a state or setting, not attachment avoidance itself, and measured food taken rather than glucose. Other personality traits were not measured, so avoidance may partly stand in for something else, and Study 1 was a small all-female sample drawn from a larger unrelated study.
Key terms
- Attachment avoidance
- A trait-like tendency to distrust others, value independence and keep emotional distance rather than seek support.
- Social baseline theory
- The idea that the brain budgets energy assuming social help is available, so people with less expected support must budget more of their own resources.
- Fasting basal glucose
- The concentration of sugar in the blood after a period without eating, a measure of readily available metabolic fuel.
- Mediation analysis
- A test of whether a third variable (here stress) carries the link between a predictor and an outcome.
- Cold pressor task
- A standard lab stressor in which people hold their hands in ice water.
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Quiz yourself
What was the main outcome measure in Studies 1 and 2?
Common questions
Could avoidant people just be more stressed, and stress raise glucose?
The authors tested this in Study 2 with three different stress measures; none explained the link, and avoidance still predicted glucose after adjusting for them.
Does this mean avoidant people are more likely to get diabetes?
No. In Study 2 avoidance was not related to diabetes or obesity, suggesting glucose stayed within a normal range.
Why does Study 4 find an effect only when people were paired?
The theory predicts secure people benefit from company and so need fewer resources afterward, while avoidant people do not expect to benefit from others, making the difference appear only in the social condition.
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