Attachment
Do people who avoid closeness keep more sugar in their blood?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
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.
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.
Key findings
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.
Methodology
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.
Limitations
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.
How this study connects
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