Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, University of California, Irvine.
Department of Psychology, University of Southern California.
J Fam Psychol. 2020 Sep;34(6):664-675. doi: 10.1037/fam0000633. Epub 2020 Feb 10.
Family-of-origin aggression (FOA) exposure is a chronic childhood stressor that has been linked to altered stress reactivity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis in adulthood. The effects of FOA also spill over between partners in romantic couples, such that one partner's FOA history influences the other's HPA reactivity during couple interactions. However, the direction of these effects is inconsistent, with both heightened and blunted HPA reactivity observed; this heterogeneity suggests the presence of moderators. This study measured HPA reactivity during emotionally vulnerable conversations between young adult romantic partners to assess whether romantic attachment avoidance accounts for this divergence by moderating actor and partner effects of FOA on HPA. A total of 112 opposite-sex couples (224 young adults) provided information on FOA and avoidance, completed dyadic interaction procedures, and provided saliva samples to assess HPA reactivity during interactions. Multilevel structural equation models revealed that FOA did not predict either the actor's or the partner's HPA reactivity. However, FOA and avoidance interacted to produce both actor and partner effects, such that greater FOA exposure heightened HPA reactivity when avoidance was high but blunted reactivity when avoidance was low. The results support the conjecture that proximal relationship-related characteristics, such as attachment avoidance, influence whether distal relationship-related stressors, such as FOA, amplify or attenuate physiological reactivity during emotionally vulnerable interactions. Because HPA reactivity has been linked to a variety of health outcomes, identifying relationship-related buffers of associations between FOA and HPA response may inform future interventions to protect health for FOA-exposed youth. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
原生家庭攻击（FOA）暴露是一种慢性童年压力源，已被证明与成年后下丘脑-垂体-肾上腺（HPA）轴的应激反应改变有关。FOA 的影响也会在浪漫伴侣之间溢出，例如，一方的 FOA 史会影响另一方在夫妻互动期间的 HPA 反应性。然而，这些影响的方向并不一致，观察到 HPA 反应性增强和减弱；这种异质性表明存在调节剂。本研究在年轻成年浪漫伴侣之间进行情感脆弱对话时测量 HPA 反应性，以评估浪漫依恋回避是否通过调节 FOA 对 HPA 的演员和伴侣效应来解释这种差异。共有 112 对异性恋伴侣（224 名年轻人）提供了关于 FOA 和回避的信息，完成了对偶互动程序，并提供了唾液样本，以评估互动过程中的 HPA 反应性。多层次结构方程模型显示，FOA 既不能预测演员的 HPA 反应性，也不能预测伴侣的 HPA 反应性。然而，FOA 和回避相互作用产生了演员和伴侣的效应，即当回避较高时，FOA 暴露程度越高，HPA 反应性就越高，但当回避较低时，反应性就越弱。研究结果支持了这样一种假设，即近端关系相关特征，如依恋回避，会影响到远端关系相关压力源，如 FOA，是否会在情感脆弱的互动中增强或减弱生理反应。由于 HPA 反应性与多种健康结果有关，确定 FOA 和 HPA 反应之间关联的关系相关缓冲因素可能为未来干预提供信息，以保护 FOA 暴露青少年的健康。
