An examination of the relationships between attachment, emotion regulation, mentalization, and psychopathology: An online experimental study

This dissertation comprises a two-phase study. In the first phase, the study aimed to investigate the relationships and interactions among attachment, emotion regulation, mentalization, and psychopathology, and to examine the pathway from attachment to psychopathology. To this end, a cross-sectional design was employed, and face-to-face data were collected from 500 participants (271 women [54.2%], 229 men [45.8%]) aged between 20 and 65, residing in three districts of Ankara province. The participants completed the Experiences in Close Relationships Inventory-II (ECR-II), the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale-Short Form (DERS-16), the Mentalization Scale (MS), and the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI-53). Confirmatory factor analysis findings of the BSI-53 indicated that although none of the six tested models achieved satisfactory fit, the bifactor model provided relatively better fit compared to the others. Findings from multiple regression analyses indicated that attachment anxiety, emotion regulation difficulties, and mentalization significantly predicted the Global Severity Index (GSI). Furthermore, two serial mediation models were tested in which attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance were the independent variables, GSI was the dependent variable, and mentalization and emotion regulation difficulties were the mediators. The results demonstrated that both attachment dimensions predicted severity of psychopathology through the sequential mediating effects of mentalization and difficulties in emotion regulation. Partial mediation was found in the attachment anxiety model, while full mediation was found in the attachment avoidance model. These findings offer a genuine contribution by examining the variables within an integrative framework. The second phase aimed to investigate the effect of attachment activation on mentalization. To achieve this, an experimental within-subject design was conducted with a sample of 42 participants (26 women [61.9%], 16 men [38.1%]) who were tested in two sessions conducted with a one-week interval. Participants completed the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) under both an attachment activation (experimental) and a neutral (control) condition. The findings revealed that RMET performance was significantly lower in the attachment activation condition compared to the neutral condition. This suggests that activation of the attachment system may impair mentalization capacity. As one of the first experimental studies to examine this relationship in a Turkish sample, this study provides an empirical contribution to the literature.