The mediating role of mindfulness between attachment style and self-concept clarity within a dyadic context

Previous research has found that attachment style is associated with self-concept clarity, and mindfulness mediates this association at an individual level. However, there is currently a lack of research on the relationship between attachment style, mindfulness, and self-concept clarity from an interpersonal perspective. Therefore, the current study aimed to extend the relationship between attachment style and self-concept clarity to a dyadic context.

To this end, we recruited online a final sample of 773 pairs of Chinese heterosexual couples (M _age = 35.43, SD _age = 3.77 for wives; M _age = 37.46, SD _age = 4.39 for husbands) to measure their attachment style, mindfulness, and self-concept clarity and conducted actor-partner interdependence mediation modeling.

The results indicate actor effects whereby an individual's mindfulness significantly mediated the relationship between their attachment style (both avoidance and anxiety) and self-concept clarity for both women and men. Furthermore, as regards the partner effect, the mindfulness of men significantly mediated the relationship between the attachment anxiety of women and the self-concept clarity of men.

Altogether, we provide evidence that the impact of attachment style on self-concept clarity within a dyadic context and the level of husbands' mindfulness could partly explain the relationship between wives' attachment anxiety and husbands' self-concept clarity. Implications of these findings are discussed.