This study examined the effect of internal working models of attachment (“anxiety” and “avoidance”) on interpersonal information processing. A lexical decision task was conducted with 64 university students. The dependent variable was the discrepancy in reaction times for positive and negative stimuli. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that for relationship-related stimuli, the discrepancy in reaction times was significantly affected by “avoidance”, as well as by the interaction of “anxiety” and “avoidance”. These effects were most prominent when the scores for both “anxiety” and “avoidance” were high. For personality-related stimuli, the discrepancy in reaction times was not affected by either “anxiety” or “avoidance”. These results indicate that processing of relationship-related information was affected by internal working models of attachment, especially by “avoidance”.
