Thesis Abstract
In this thesis, through the lens of agentic emotion regulation theory (Woodman et al., 2010) and attachment theory (Barlow, 1969), we aimed to investigate the emotion regulation function that activities may serve.
Agentic emotion regulation theory provides an individual-differences perspective on participants’ psychological needs and motives for engaging in risk-taking activities (Woodman et al., 2010). According to agentic emotion regulation theory, high-risk activities provide greater opportunities to experience and control strong externally derived emotions, in which participants' agentic actions alter the nature of their emotions and life circumstances (i.e., success, injury, death). In this way, participating in high-risk activities, such as mountaineering, has been shown to reduce participants’ emotion regulation difficulties and bolster their sense of agency immediately after participation (Barlow et al., 2013). Despite these advancements, we do not understand how participants' agentic emotion regulation difficulties evolve between participation. Understanding the evolution of participants’ agentic emotion regulation between participation would help to explain the motives that underlie their repeated return to the high-risk sports domain.
Attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969) is another perspective on how our relationships with people, activities, and objects influence our emotion regulation strategies and wellbeing. Bowlby's (1980) attachment theory proposes that all individuals strive to maintain close relationships with agents that provide a safe haven from distress and secure base from which to explore. Researchers have begun expanding the scope of attachment theory by investigating the attachment emotion regulation function that nonhuman agents serve, such as pets and objects, in response to social insecurity (Keefer et al., 2014). Despite these advancements, discrepancies remain regarding the definition of genuine attachment relationships within this literature and there are scant empirical tools for measuring the attachment support that human-nonhuman relationships provide (Carr & Rockett, 2017). As such, there is ongoing debate regarding the attachment function that human-nonhuman relationships serve and their compensatory role in response to insecure social relationships (Keefer et al., 2014).
Chapter 1 outlines the agentic emotion regulation and attachment theory rationale on which Chapters 2, 3, and 4 are based.
In Chapter 2 of this thesis, we provide evidence that high-risk climbers, such as mountaineers and traditional climbers, are motivated by the agentic emotion regulation function that participation serves. Studies 1, 2, and 3 show that high-risk climbers experience a greater increase in agency and emotion regulation difficulty between participation than low-risk climbers (i.e., sport climbers) and low-risk sporting participants (e.g., swimming) who displayed no such difficulty. Collectively, these findings provide the first repeated-measures evidence that high-risk activities are beneficial for regulating participants' agentic emotion regulation difficulties.
In Chapter 3 (Study 4), we provide support for the attachment function that elite athletes’ activities serve. Specifically, our qualitative findings suggested that athletes sought their activities as a safe haven from their interpersonal and intrapersonal anxieties. Furthermore, these findings provide a novel insight into the emotion regulation processes that athletes’ activity attachments supported. That is, athletes’ activities provided a secure base from which to reflect and reappraise challenging emotions.
In Chapter 4 (Study 5) we first developed and provided support for the psychometric properties of the four-factor Relationship Attachment Support Scale and six-factor Relationship Exploratory Support Scale. Then, in Study 6, we provided support for the compensatory attachment role that activities serve in response to social insecurity. Specifically, the emotion regulation benefits of individuals’ activity attachments significantly attenuated the negative relationship between insecure social attachment and wellbeing. Collectively, these findings provide a preliminary insight into the emotion regulation processes and benefits of activity attachment, especially for those suffering from insecure social attachments. Chapter 5 of this thesis discusses the results from three empirical chapters (Chapters 2, 3, and 4) in a theoretical and applied context.