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Parents who feel more secure in their early caregiving experiences tend to be better at emotionally engaging with positive memories, according to new research published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. The study found that mothers with secure attachment representations were more likely to savor and richly describe moments of joy—whether those moments involved their children or not—while those with dismissing attachment styles showed a reduced capacity to express positive emotion during those reflections.
Attachment theory proposes that early experiences with caregivers form the foundation for how people relate to others throughout life. British psychiatrist John Bowlby argued that children develop internal “working models” of relationships based on whether caregivers are reliable sources of safety and comfort. These models, which include expectations about closeness, support, and emotional regulation, tend to persist into adulthood and shape behaviors in romantic and parental relationships.
Attachment security tends to reflect a balanced view of past relationships, including both positive and negative aspects. In contrast, a dismissing attachment pattern involves minimizing the importance of emotional closeness, often accompanied by vague or idealized recollections of early caregivers. Another form, preoccupied attachment, reflects an ongoing emotional entanglement with past experiences.
While there is extensive evidence linking attachment to parenting behaviors and emotional regulation, less is known about how attachment influences a parent’s ability to “savor” positive experiences—an emotion regulation strategy that involves deeply attending to and prolonging feelings of joy or connection. Savoring has been shown to improve mood, increase resilience, and strengthen interpersonal relationships.
“I’ve long been interested in how parents’ emotional experiences shape both their well-being and their relationships with their children,” said study author Jessie Borelli, a professor and associate director of clinical training at the University of California, Irvine.
“For the past 15 years, I’ve been particularly focused on testing whether savoring—the practice of intentionally focusing on and emotionally engaging with positive moments—can serve as a brief, low-cost intervention to enhance mothers’ sense of connection and joy in parenting. Relational savoring (Borelli, 2024) specifically involves reflecting on moments of positive connection with others, helping individuals re-experience the emotions and thoughts tied to the meaning of those experiences. Our prior work, primarily with parents, has shown that relational savoring can increase feelings of closeness and positive emotion in relationships.”
“In the current study, we also wanted to understand whether mothers’ attachment patterns predict their ability to engage in savoring interventions—both relational savoring (focusing on a moment of connection with their child) and personal savoring (focusing on a positive experience from their own life).”
Researchers typically measure attachment styles using two approaches: structured interviews and self-report questionnaires. The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) analyzes the coherence and emotional depth of a person’s narrative about childhood relationships. The self-report questionnaire known as the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised (ECR-R) assesses attitudes toward romantic relationships, including discomfort with intimacy (avoidance) and fears of abandonment (anxiety).
The study involved 147 mothers of toddlers between 18 and 27 months old. Before participating in the intervention, each mother completed two attachment assessments. The AAI provided insight into how they mentally organized and emotionally processed early caregiving experiences, while the ECR-R assessed attachment-related thoughts and feelings about their current romantic relationships.
The mothers were randomly assigned to one of two interventions, each consisting of four weekly in-home sessions designed to help them reflect on positive emotional experiences. In the relational savoring condition, mothers were guided to recall moments of emotional closeness with their child—times when they felt especially connected, protective, or attuned, such as comforting the child during distress or supporting their independence. These memories were meant to highlight the caregiving role and evoke feelings of warmth, safety, and mutual connection.
In contrast, the personal savoring condition focused on positive moments that did not involve the child. Mothers were encouraged to choose memories in which they had experienced personal joy or contentment—such as enjoying a peaceful walk, achieving a personal goal, or spending time with a friend. This condition served as a comparison to distinguish the effects of savoring interpersonal memories from savoring more individual ones.
Each session followed a structured format. After a brief relaxation and mindfulness exercise to help mothers become more reflective, they were guided through a five-step process: recalling the memory, describing the sensory and emotional details, exploring its personal meaning, thinking about how it influenced their future, and freely reflecting on any related thoughts. These sessions were audio-recorded and transcribed.
To assess the quality of savoring, trained coders reviewed each transcript and rated it along two key dimensions. The first was positivity, or how much positive emotion the mother expressed during the memory—such as warmth, pride, or joy. The second was specificity, which referred to the richness of the memory’s details, including sensory descriptions, context, and emotional nuance.
The researchers found that the way a mother described her early attachment relationships strongly influenced the quality of her savoring experience. Mothers classified as more secure on the AAI tended to generate more emotionally positive and specific narratives, regardless of whether they were savoring a personal or relational memory. Those with a dismissing attachment style—characterized by emotional distancing and vague recollections—tended to produce less emotionally positive reflections.
Notably, the dismissing attachment style was specifically linked to a lack of emotional warmth in savoring narratives, but not to how detailed those narratives were. This may suggest that individuals with dismissing attachment are capable of remembering and describing specific events but tend to suppress or avoid emotional involvement during those recollections. On the other hand, greater specificity in savoring was positively associated with secure attachment and with older maternal age, hinting that life experience may also play a role in how richly people recall past events.
“Overall, greater attachment security—as indicated by higher scores on the AAI and lower levels of insecure-dismissing attachment—was associated with higher-quality savoring,” Borelli told PsyPost. “This suggests that individuals who are more secure in their attachment, as measured by interview-based methods, are able to engage more deeply in both relational and personal savoring interventions.”
“Importantly, this does not mean that only securely attached individuals benefit from savoring. In fact, our previous research (Burkhart et al., 2015) has shown that individuals with higher attachment insecurity—particularly those with higher avoidance—may experience greater gains from savoring interventions.”
“These findings have meaningful implications for clinical practice. Therapists working with insecure-dismissing clients may wish to emphasize the experience and elaboration of positive emotions within savoring exercises, as this may be a particularly challenging area for these individuals.
“Strategies might include encouraging clients to notice moments of positivity in interactions with their child between sessions, assigning written savoring reflections that focus on specific details of these interactions, and using tools such as an emotion wheel or guided elaboration to help clients deepen their emotional reflection,” Borelli continued. “These approaches may enhance the effectiveness of savoring interventions by supporting clients in accessing and elaborating on positive emotional experiences.”
Interestingly, the self-report measure of attachment did not show the same associations. Neither avoidance nor anxiety scores from the ECR-R predicted savoring quality in a consistent or robust way. This difference suggests that the AAI may tap into deeper or more implicit processes related to emotional engagement, which are not fully captured by conscious self-report.
“The stark contrast in findings between the AAI and the ECR-R was both striking and unexpected,” Borelli said. “Although prior research has documented that these two measures of attachment often show weak or no correlation with each other, both are typically associated with theoretically relevant constructs. In this study, however, only the AAI was linked to savoring quality, while the ECR-R showed no such association.”
Although the sample was diverse in terms of ethnicity, it was less diverse in terms of socioeconomic status. In addition, all participants were mothers, which limits the generalizability of the findings to fathers or other caregivers.
“Relying exclusively on mothers from a predominantly middle-class, community sample is a notable limitation of this study,” Borelli noted. “Replicating the findings in clinical populations and among lower-income families would strengthen the generalizability of the results. Moreover, most savoring intervention research has focused on mothers; there is a significant and urgent need to extend this work to fathers. Finally, although we employed a longitudinal design with four sessions, the study was not sufficiently powered to examine whether the association between attachment and savoring quality changed over time.”
Expanding the scope of participants could help determine whether the patterns observed in this study hold true in settings with different cultural norms, economic pressures, or caregiving dynamics. Such work would not only improve the robustness of the findings but also guide adaptations that make the intervention more widely applicable.
“I have been working to better understand how this intervention works—specifically, for whom it is most effective and under what conditions, including participant and intervener characteristics,” Borelli said. “This study is part of a broader program of research aimed at testing models to identify the key factors that shape intervention outcomes. These insights are critical for informing future intervention development and adaptation. My current work focuses on using community engagement methods to tailor relational savoring for members of minoritized cultural groups (Borelli, 2024; Borelli, Zhou et al., 2024) and in different cultural contexts (Ansarifar et al., 2025), building on the findings of earlier studies.”
“Savoring may appear to be a small act, but it holds meaningful potential as a psychological intervention,” she added. “Encouraging parents to pause, reflect, and emotionally reconnect with positive moments can powerfully support both their well-being and their relationships with their children. Integrating practices like savoring into daily routines offers a sustainable and accessible path to lasting change.”
The study, “Adult attachment as a predictor of savoring quality in mothers of toddlers: Results from a 4-week randomized trial,” was authored by Silvia Perzolli, Daniela Arcos, Margaret L. Kerr, Patricia A. Smiley, and Jessica L. Borelli.
