Attachment effects on affect, cognitions, and behavior during an interactio
n with a confederate who purportedly had cancer and whose attachment orient
ation had been manipulated in a prior context were examined among 241 parti
cipants. Results supported theoretically derived predictions: Participant a
nxious attachment predicted anxiety, participant avoidant attachment predic
ted supportiveness, and participant avoidant attachment interacted with con
federate avoidant attachment to predict rejection. Results suggest (a) the
importance of attachment in predicting inter-personal responses in a nonrom
antic stressful context, (b) that anxious attachment is an important predic
tor of anxiety in a situation with implicit support demands, (c) that avoid
ant attachment is a potentially important predictor of the likelihood of su
pportive responses to victims, and (d) that attachment orientation can be s
uccessfully manipulated in experimental studies of attachment.