Study 1 provided an initial test of our hypothesis that priming close
others' unreliability would increase object attachment. Our priming
manipulation was based on conceptually related operationalizations
used in prior research. Researchers have asked participants to memorize
(Green & Campbell, 2000) or unscramble (Finkel, Burnette, &
Scissors, 2007) sentences referring to close others' unreliability (e.g.,
“The mother was unreliable”). We used an open-ended writing task
whereby participants were asked to reflect on real situations in which,
depending on condition, close others were reliable or unreliable in a
time of need. We went beyond prior operationalizations by manipulating
whether the targets of the prime were close others or strangers. This
allowed us to test whether the effect of our threat induction is specifi-
cally due to the salience of close others' unreliability, as we claim, and
not simply the unreliability of others in general. Afterward we measured
object attachment using a scale developed by Nedelisky and
Steele (2009). We predicted that priming close others' unreliability,
but not strangers' unreliability, would increase object attachment.