One study found that when people were primed with security, their heart rate variability (changes in the time between heartbeats) didn’t fluctuate as significantly when they were socially excluded. But when people weren’t primed with security, it did. Heart rate variability fluctuates when our heart is responding to stress, leading the study’s authors to conclude, “Attachment may provide an important mechanism to increase adaptive responding to the distressing experience of social exclusion.”
