Longitudinal study reveals distinct cognitive pathways for fear of intimacy in young adults, indicating that fear dimensions involve separate psychological mechanisms.
Key Points
To determine whether rejection sensitivity mediates the prospective link between disconnection/rejection schema and fear of intimacy, and whether perceived social support moderates this relationship over time.
Assessed 236 young adults (82.6% women, age range 17–32 years, mean age = 21.41) across a four-month longitudinal follow-up interval.
Tested a longitudinal moderated mediation model with autoregressive controls for baseline rejection sensitivity and fear of intimacy, followed by exploratory dimension-specific analyses.
The overall prospective moderated mediation model predicting total fear of intimacy was not supported after controlling for baseline measures.
Rejection sensitivity prospectively associated with fear of losing the other, whereas disconnection/rejection schema demonstrated a direct longitudinal link with fear of losing the self.
A conditional indirect effect via rejection sensitivity appeared only under high perceived social support, but the overall interaction effect lacked statistical significance.