"Being bad at relationships is good for survival."

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Umm... might be interesting to some.

I think that what this means is there may be benefits for a group if not all individuals are happily nestled into relationships.

Cool
Insecure attachment may also signal a heightened need to pay attention to your surroundings, which could explain this article.

I can see why someone with, for example, an ambivalent attachment might be more inclined to solve their own problems and act decisively. I have a harder time seeing why someone in a secure relationship would need more time to "organize themselves" in order to percieve threats in their environment.
It sounds like there might be some confounding variables Obviously I can't dispute it with absolute certainty, but until the link in the relationship between secure attachments and perceptiveness is explained with more detail I can't believe it. It's an interesting study though. I'll have to keep watch for a follow up or a duplicate study.

Sure, makes sense. Those in a variety of social relationships are used to other people doing things for them.

But in the grand scheme of things not having scape goats/defenders will lead to a reduced survival rate for the outsider. Plus the outsider of the group will have less incentive to warn the group, which further reduces the odds that the outsider's existence would be beneficial to the group.

Yes, it's been shown before than anxious types have a better chance to respond to danger before confident types and are more likely to survive... but that doesn't mean much in a generally safe modern world where survival is guaranteed.

*sighs* survival isn't guaranteed. It's the illusion of guaranteed survival that people buy. Not sighing at you, just at those who do stupid needless things.
This is a really interesting test. Socializing can be quite distracting.

Survival is but an illusion, we all die eventually XD

Being bad at relationships means that you will never reproduce, your genes will therefore not survive.

Discuss.

Vanilla_Slice

nature seems to have found a way to keep us nonreproducers around still, for whatever reasons, regardless of whose particular genes make it into the next round.

speaking of survival rates of NT versus AS versus whomever, i can say that my NT older sister has always been much more relaxed about environmental dangers than i ever was. but this blasé attitude literally stung her in the butt, when we were both in the backyard in front of a hole in the ground that we too late discovered was a hornet's nest- as soon as i saw the first sentry bees start swarming i was outta there post-haste, running a good 50 feet away, while my sister was still squatting on the ground in front of the nest wondering about it and seemingly oblivious to the sentry bees even as i warned her to get back from the nest, when all of a sudden they all came pouring out of the nest and started stinging the dickens out of her while i was running in blind terror back into the house, and she too late ran into the house with the hornets in hot pursuit, and as soon as she slammed the door behind her, we noticed that a few hornets had made it inside the house, so i was quickly out the front door in the front yard while she bravely hunted down the infernal things with a fly swatter, getting stung all the while.

so what does this all have to do with group survival rates and how AS types figure into the mix? from what i can tell, if my sister had listened to me, she would have avoided much painful stinging, but if i had her bravery, i woulda stuck around to help her kill the damned bees, so in this limited respect our little sibling society's survival benefits from both types of people, namely NTs and AS types.
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just my 2-cents' worth, adjusted for inflation

Survival is a bit more guaranteed in that we have medicine, safety, social infrastructure, clean water and foods...

When people do studies like this, they're often comparing this to survival in the wild like an animal. That's very different from the relatively safe world modern humans live in. Basic instinctual survival skills like being anxious and naturally suspicious of new things aren't as great an advantage in this age. In the wild, the anxious types lived longer because of their caution and had a better chance to pass on their genes while risk takers usually fell prey to accidents and died off. It's pretty much the reverse now in our safe lifestyle where the risk takers reap all the rewards and the anxious types are left in the dust.

cant wait til the yellowstone supervolcano to go krakatoa. Then maybe ill be of use again XD

But I like Yellowstone...

XD

I'm bad at relationships and still managed to reproduce.

"We"? A hefty chunk of the world doesn't. And most countries have areas which are extremely unsafe and paranoia increases lifespan.

This supposed safety is just in little pockets scattered around the world.

I completely understand the dynamic this article describes. And Auntblabby's personal "sting" example illustrates it beautifully. Even in a theoretically safe enviroment (his backyard) there was a (minor) threat that his secure, and unworried sister did not see coming. Nervous people are sentinels. But you can't have a society of entirely nervous people because somebody needs to not worry and boldly get stuff done. It's all a balance.

Yes. Penicillin exists and it didn't back in the day. But neither did HIV or cars that go 80 mph on the highway while driven by a drunk person. Danger didn't go away and I really don't think it lessened either. It just changed forms in some places, and not at all in others. No clean water in Haiti. Not much penicillin either.

then you HAD to be good with at least ONE relationship then, no?