Secure attachment schemas guide expectations of support: Electrophysiological evidence

Attachment schemas, shaped by relational experiences in infancy and early childhood, encode core beliefs about the self, close others, and relationship dynamics, guiding expectations of support in times of distress. While extensive research has documented attachment-related biases in cognition, evidence for their neural correlates remains limited. In this ERP study, we examined neural activity linked to attachment-schema-based expectations of support. Thirty-nine Swedish-speaking, right-handed women read short narratives depicting either stressful (attachment condition) or neutral (non-attachment condition) situations, ending with either a supportive or a non-supportive outcome. Participants rated ease of visualization for each narrative. An N400 effect was found for attachment contexts, revealing stronger negative responses for non-supportive versus supportive endings, indicating violated expectations. Additionally, late positive potential (LPP) effects emerged: non-supportive endings elicited greater positivity in attachment narratives, whereas supportive endings did so in non-attachment narratives, reflecting heightened emotional reactivity. Critically, the N400 effect was significant in securely, but not insecurely, attached participants. Regardless of narrative context, only securely attached individuals showed enhanced visualization for supportive (vs. non-supportive) endings. Together, our findings provide direct neural evidence to the central assumption of attachment theory that attachment schemas operate as implicit knowledge structures guiding expectations of support.