Are Your Disputants Insecure and Does It Matter? Attachment and Disputants' Speech during Mediation

An exploratory qualitative study explored the effect of attachment styles on disputants' speech during real-life mediations. Drawing on attachment theory, we classified disputants as secure or insecure individuals using a self-report attachment-style questionnaire.Subsequently, they entered their mediation sessions, where their entire speech was recorded. Qualitative analysis of their speech yielded consistent and sometimes striking differences that portrayed secure speech as remarkably more useful and enhancing toward resolution compared with insecure speech. The findings, presented with many examples, strongly indicate the relevance of attachment to the research of communication during mediation sessions. In this report, we also consider the practical implications of the association between attachment and disputants' behavior, emphasizing the role of mediators.