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Assessing Associations Among Interpersonal Closeness, Fear Of Intimacy, Secure Attachment, And A Maternally Warm Rearing Style, Fernando Trivelli Alessandri

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Decades of evidence suggest that maternal warmth contributes to prosocial outcomes later in life. This survey study examined specific social outcomes in 241 college students and found that, while their perceived maternal warmth was correlated with a number of social outcomes, the relationships were not as strong as hypothesized. In addition, applying a behavioral and social learning framework, it was hypothesized that the variance explained by maternal warmth would be reduced when regressions included the practices of making self-disclosures and eliciting conversation and self-disclosures from others; this hypothesis was supported, but not as strongly as anticipated.