attachment style research paper

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Attachment style predicts affect, cognitive appraisals, and social functioning in daily life.

$\r\nTamara Sheinbaum$

1 Departament de Psicologia Clínica i de la Salut, Facultat de Psicologia, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
2 Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, USA
3 Sant Pere Claver – Fundació Sanitària, Barcelona, Spain
4 Centre for Biomedical Research Network on Mental Health, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain
5 Red de Excelencia PROMOSAM (PSI2014-56303-REDT), MINECO, Spain

The way in which attachment styles are expressed in the moment as individuals navigate their real-life settings has remained an area largely untapped by attachment research. The present study examined how adult attachment styles are expressed in daily life using experience sampling methodology (ESM) in a sample of 206 Spanish young adults. Participants were administered the Attachment Style Interview (ASI) and received personal digital assistants that signaled them randomly eight times per day for 1 week to complete questionnaires about their current experiences and social context. As hypothesized, participants’ momentary affective states, cognitive appraisals, and social functioning varied in meaningful ways as a function of their attachment style. Individuals with an anxious attachment, as compared with securely attached individuals, endorsed experiences that were congruent with hyperactivating tendencies, such as higher negative affect, stress, and perceived social rejection. By contrast, individuals with an avoidant attachment, relative to individuals with a secure attachment, endorsed experiences that were consistent with deactivating tendencies, such as decreased positive states and a decreased desire to be with others when alone. Furthermore, the expression of attachment styles in social contexts was shown to be dependent upon the subjective appraisal of the closeness of social contacts, and not merely upon the presence of social interactions. The findings support the ecological validity of the ASI and the person-by-situation character of attachment theory. Moreover, they highlight the utility of ESM for investigating how the predictions derived from attachment theory play out in the natural flow of real life.

Introduction

Attachment theory ( Bowlby, 1973 , 1980 , 1982 ), along with its theoretical and empirical extensions (e.g., Main, 1990 ; Schore, 1994 ; Mikulincer and Shaver, 2003 ), is a useful and influential framework for understanding personality development, relational processes, and the regulation of affect. Over the past two decades, an increasing body of research has accrued on the origins and correlates of individual differences in adult attachment styles ( Mikulincer and Shaver, 2007 ). However, an important limitation of previous studies is that many failed to take into account the effect of context on the expression of attachment styles. This is surprising given that attachment theory is in essence a “person by situation” interactionist theoretical framework ( Campbell and Marshall, 2011 ; Simpson and Winterheld, 2012 ), and possibly derives from the scarcity of methods allowing for such a dynamic approach. Although significant insights have been obtained by focusing on individual differences in retrospective reports of the expression of attachment, at present there is scant knowledge regarding how attachment styles are expressed in the moment and how they play out in real-world settings ( Torquati and Raffaelli, 2004 ). The current study extends previous work by employing experience sampling methodology (ESM), a time-sampling procedure, to examine the daily life expression of adult attachment styles in a non-clinical sample of young adults.

Attachment theory is a lifespan approach that postulates that people are born with an innate motivational system (termed the attachment behavioral system) that becomes activated during times of actual or symbolic threat, prompting the individual to seek proximity to particular others with the goal of alleviating distress and obtaining a sense of security ( Bowlby, 1982 ). A cornerstone of the theory is that individuals build cognitive-affective representations, or “internal working models” of the self and others, based on their cumulative history of interactions with attachment figures ( Bowlby, 1973 ; Bartholomew and Horowitz, 1991 ). These models guide how information from the social world is appraised and play an essential role in the process of affect regulation throughout the lifespan ( Kobak and Sceery, 1988 ; Collins et al., 2004 ).

The majority of research on adult attachment has centered on attachment styles and their measurement (for a review, see Mikulincer and Shaver, 2007 ). In broad terms, attachment styles may be conceptualized in terms of security vs. insecurity. Repeated interactions with emotionally accessible and sensitively responsive attachment figures promote the formation of a secure attachment style, characterized by positive internal working models and effective strategies for coping with distress. Conversely, repeated interactions with unresponsive or inconsistent figures result in the risk of developing insecure attachment styles, characterized by negative internal working models of the self and/or others and the use of less optimal affect regulation strategies ( Mikulincer and Shaver, 2007 ).

Although there is a wide range of conceptualizations and measures of attachment insecurity, these are generally defined by high levels of anxiety and/or avoidance in close relationships. Attachment anxiety reflects a desire for closeness and a worry of being rejected by or separated from significant others, whereas attachment avoidance reflects a strong preference for self-reliance, as well as discomfort with closeness and intimacy with others ( Brennan et al., 1998 ; Bifulco and Thomas, 2013 ). These styles involve distinct secondary attachment strategies for regulating distress – individuals with attachment anxiety tend to use a hyperactivating (or maximizing) strategy, while individuals with attachment avoidance tend to rely on a deactivating (or minimizing) strategy ( Cassidy and Kobak, 1988 ; Main, 1990 ; Mikulincer and Shaver, 2003 , 2008 ). Indeed, previous empirical studies indicate that attachment anxiety is associated with increased negative emotional responses, heightened detection of threats in the environment, and negative views of the self ( Griffin and Bartholomew, 1994 ; Mikulincer and Orbach, 1995 ; Fraley et al., 2006 ; Ein-Dor et al., 2011 ). By contrast, attachment avoidance is associated with emotional inhibition or suppression, the dismissal of threatening events, and inflation of self-conceptions ( Fraley and Shaver, 1997 ; Gjerde et al., 2004 ; Mikulincer and Shaver, 2007 ).

Relatively few studies have examined attachment styles in the context of everyday life. Most of these studies have used event-contingent sampling techniques, such as the Rochester Interaction Record (RIR; Reis and Wheeler, 1991 ), and have primarily focused on assessing how individual differences in self-reported attachment are related to responses to social interactions in general and/or to specific social interactions (e.g., with acquaintances, friends, family members, close others, same- and opposite-sex peers). Despite various methodological and attachment classification differences that complicate direct comparison of these findings, this body of research has shown that compared to secure attachment, anxious (or preoccupied) attachment is associated with more variability in terms of positive emotions and promotive interactions (a composite measure of disclosure and support; Tidwell et al., 1996 ), lower self-esteem ( Pietromonaco and Barrett, 1997 ), greater feelings of anxiety and rejection, as well as perceiving more negative emotions in others ( Kafetsios and Nezlek, 2002 ). In contrast, compared to secure attachment, avoidant (or dismissing) attachment has been associated with lower levels of happiness and self-disclosure ( Kafetsios and Nezlek, 2002 ), lower perceived quality of interactions with romantic partners ( Sibley and Liu, 2006 ), a tendency to differentiate less between close and non-close others in terms of disclosure ( Pietromonaco and Barrett, 1997 ), and higher negative affect along with lower positive affect, intimacy, and enjoyment, predominantly in opposite-sex interactions ( Tidwell et al., 1996 ).

Studies using event-contingent methods such as the RIR have shed light on how varying social encounters trigger differential responses as a function of attachment style; however, since the focus is on objectively defined interactional phenomena (e.g., interactions lasting 10 min or longer), these types of paradigms are unable to capture the wide range of naturally occurring subjective states and appraisals that take place as individuals navigate through their daily life. Unlike previous research, the current study used ESM, a within-day self-assessment technique in which participants are prompted at random or predetermined intervals to answer brief questionnaires about their current experiences. ESM offers several advantages compared to traditional laboratory or clinic-based assessment procedures (e.g., deVries, 1992 ; Hektner et al., 2007 ; Conner et al., 2009 ). These include: (1) ESM repeatedly assesses participants in their daily environment, thereby enhancing ecological validity, (2) it captures information at the time of the signal, thus minimizing retrospective recall bias, and (3) it allows for investigating the context of participants’ experiences.

To our knowledge, the work of Torquati and Raffaelli (2004) is the only ESM study that has assessed how daily life experiences of emotion differed as a function of attachment category (secure vs. insecure) and context (being alone or in the presence of familiar intimates). In a sample of undergraduate students, they found that both when in the presence of familiar intimates and when alone, the secure group reported higher levels of emotions relating to energy and connection than the insecure group. Additionally, when alone, securely attached individuals reported greater levels of positive affect than insecurely attached individuals. Moreover, although the two groups did not differ in the variability of their emotional states, participants with a secure style endorsed more extreme positive emotional states across all social contexts, whereas those with insecure styles endorsed more extreme negative emotional states, particularly when they were alone. Their results supported the notion that attachment styles exert a broad influence on affective experiences; nevertheless, an important limitation of this study was that it only reported findings comparing secure vs. insecure participants, and thus it did not provide information on how the subtypes of insecure attachment differ from the secure style. Therefore, further empirical research is needed to examine how attachment styles are expressed in the flow of daily life and whether the interplay between attachment styles and the features of the environment gives rise to different patterns of experiences in the moment. Demonstrating that attachment styles exhibit meaningful associations with real-world experiences in the domains that are theoretically influenced by an individual’s attachment style would provide evidence of the validity of the attachment style construct in the immediate context in which the person is embedded. Moreover, identifying attachment-style variations in how the social context relates to momentary experiences would enhance our understanding of how attachment styles operate in the immediate social milieu.

The Current Study

The present study examines the expression of secure, anxious, and avoidant attachment styles in daily life using ESM. It extends previous research in several ways. First, the current study employs an interview, rather than a self-report measure, to assess attachment styles. The Attachment Style Interview (ASI; Bifulco et al., 2002 ) is a semi-structured interview that belongs to the social psychology approach to attachment research and has the strength of utilizing contextualized narrative and objective examples to determine the individual’s current attachment style. Second, this study examines the expression of attachment styles at random time points across participants’ daily life, not just during particular events such as social interactions, and thus captures a more extensive profile of person-environment transactions. Third, this study examines the impact of two aspects of the social context on the expression of attachment styles in the moment: social contact and perceived social closeness when with others. None of the previous diary studies have examined attachment style differences in the effects of social contact and social closeness on participants’ subjective appraisals of themselves (e.g., their coping capabilities), their current situation (e.g., how stressful it is), or their social functioning (e.g., preference for being alone).

The first aim of this study was to examine the associations between attachment styles and measures of affect, cognitive appraisals (about the self, others, and the situation), and social functioning as they occur in daily life. Following attachment theory, it was hypothesized that compared to both insecure attachment groups, secure attachment would be associated with higher ratings of positive affect, self-esteem, feeling cared for, as well as with experiencing more closeness in social interactions. In terms of insecure attachment, a different pattern was predicted for the anxious and avoidant styles. We hypothesized that compared to securely attached participants, those with anxious attachment would endorse higher levels of negative affect, affect instability, subjective stress, feeling unable to cope, and perceived social rejection. We predicted that avoidant attachment, as compared with the secure style, would be associated with lower ratings of positive affect, a decreased desire to be with others when alone, and an increased preference for being alone when with others. In essence, this would provide evidence of ecological construct validity of the attachment styles.

The second aim of the current study was to investigate whether attachment styles moderate the associations of social contact and social closeness with momentary affect, appraisals, and social functioning. Given the lack of engagement and emotional distance that characterizes avoidant attachment, it was hypothesized that social contact would elicit less positive affect in avoidant participants as compared to their secure peers. Additionally, given that one of the most salient features of anxious individuals is that they desire closeness but fear rejection and abandonment, it was predicted that anxious participants would experience higher negative affect with people with whom they did not feel close, than would those with a secure attachment.

Materials and Methods

Participants.

Participants were 206 (44 men, 162 women) undergraduate students recruited from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in Spain. The mean age of the sample was 21.3 years ( SD = 2.4). An additional eight participants enrolled in the study and completed the interview phase, but were omitted from the analyses due to failing to complete the ESM protocols. Ethical approval for the study was obtained from the University Ethics Committee. Participants provided written informed consent and were paid for their participation.

Materials and Procedure

Participants were assessed with the ASI, along with other interview and questionnaire measures not used in the present study. The ASI is a semi-structured interview that measures current attachment style through questions that elicit the content and context of interpersonal attitudes and behaviors ( Bifulco, 2002 ). The interview is composed of two parts. In the first part, a behavioral evaluation of the ability to make and maintain relationships is made (on a 4-point scale from “marked” to “little/none”) on the basis of the overall quality of the person’s ongoing relationships with up to three supportive figures (referred to as “very close others”), including partner if applicable. The term “behavioral evaluation” denotes that ratings are based on descriptions of actual behavior (such as instances of recent confiding, emotional support received, and presence of tension/conflicts with each “very close other”). The second part of the ASI assesses individuals’ feelings and thoughts about themselves in relation to others. Specifically, ratings are obtained for seven attitudinal scales that reflect anxiety and avoidance in relationships. These scales are: fear of rejection, fear of separation, desire for company, mistrust, anger, self-reliance, and constraints on closeness. Ratings on the attitudinal scales are based on the intensity of the attitude and the level of generalization. Most of them are rated on 4-point scales from “marked” to “little/none.”

The scores obtained throughout the interview are combined to enable the classification of the person’s attachment profile, which encompasses both the attachment style categorization as well as the degree of severity for the insecure styles. Note that scoring the ASI and deriving the person’s attachment profile is done on the basis of prior training, according to established rating rules and benchmark thresholds. Further details on the scoring scheme and case examples can be found in Bifulco and Thomas (2013) . Previous studies have provided evidence for the reliability and validity of the ASI ( Bifulco et al., 2004 ; Bifulco and Thomas, 2013 ). In the present study, the three main attachment style categories (i.e., secure, anxious, and avoidant) were used for analyses.

Experience sampling methodology data were collected on palm pilot personal digital assistants (PDAs). The PDAs signaled the participants randomly eight times a day (between 10 a.m. and 10 p.m.) for 1 week to complete brief questionnaires. When prompted by the signal, the participants had 5 min to initiate responding. After this time window or upon completion of the questionnaire, the PDA would become inactive until the next signal. Each questionnaire took ∼2 min to complete.

The ESM questionnaire included items that inquired about the following domains: (1) affect in the moment, (2) appraisals about the self, (3) appraisals about others, (4) appraisals of the current situation, (5) social contact, and (6) social appraisals and functioning (see Table 1 for the English translation of the ESM items used in the present study). The social contact item (i.e., “Right now I am alone”) was answered dichotomously (yes/no), whereas the remaining items were answered using 7-point scales from 1 (not at all) to 7 (very much). Note that for the sake of aiding the interpretation of the results we have made a distinction between affective states and cognitive appraisals; however, we recognize that such a distinction is not clear-cut and that affect and cognition are complexly intertwined processes. Likewise, we grouped appraisals as pertaining to the self, others, or the situation. This distinction is somewhat artificial but useful for organizing the presentation of the data. Note that, unlike most previous studies, the label “appraisals about others” does not refer to participants’ ratings of interaction partners, but to the manner in which participants’ experience others’ motives, actions, or esteem toward them.

TABLE 1. Direct effects of attachment style on daily life experiences.

Statistical Method

Experience sampling methodology data have a hierarchical structure in which daily life ratings (level 1 data) are nested within participants (level 2 data). Multilevel or hierarchical linear modeling techniques are a standard approach for the analysis of ESM data ( Nezlek, 2001 ; Bolger and Laurenceau, 2013 ). The multilevel analyses examined two types of relations between the attachment groups and daily life experiences. First, we assessed the independent effects of level 2 predictors (attachment style groups) on level 1 dependent measures (ESM ratings in daily life). Second, cross-level interactions (or slopes-as-outcomes) examined whether level 1 relationships (e.g., closeness and negative affect in the moment) varied as a function of level 2 variables (attachment groups). The analyses were conducted with Mplus 6 ( Muthén and Muthén, 1998–2010 ). To examine the effects of attachment, the analyses included two dummy-coded attachment style variables that were entered simultaneously as the level 2 predictors, following Cohen et al. (2003) . The first dummy code contrasted the anxious and secure attachment groups, and the second contrasted the avoidant and secure attachment groups. The secure attachment group was coded 0 in both codings. Note that direct comparisons of the anxious and avoidant attachment groups were not made, given that our hypotheses focused on differences between secure and insecure attachment. Level 1 predictors were group-mean centered ( Enders and Tofighi, 2007 ). The data departed from normality in some cases, so parameter estimates were calculated using maximum likelihood estimation with robust SEs.

Based upon the ASI, 119 (57.8%) of the participants were categorized as having secure attachment, 46 (22.3%) as having anxious attachment, and 41 (19.9%) as having avoidant attachment. These percentages are comparable to those reported in previous studies using the ASI in non-clinical samples (e.g., Conde et al., 2011 ; Oskis et al., 2013 ). The attachment groups did not differ in terms of age or sex. Participants completed an average of 40.8 usable ESM questionnaires ( SD = 9.1). The attachment groups did not differ on the mean number of usable questionnaires (Secure = 40.8, SD = 8.2; Anxious = 40.5, SD = 9.8; Avoidant = 41.1, SD = 10.9).

Expression of Attachment Styles in Daily Life

Table 1 presents the direct effects of attachment on daily life experiences. Compared to participants with a secure attachment, those with an anxious attachment reported higher negative affect, lower positive affect, as well as greater fear of losing control in daily life. As expected, the avoidant and secure groups did not differ in their ratings of negative affect, but avoidant participants reported feeling less happy than their secure counterparts. In addition to comparing the attachment groups on the experience of mean levels of affect in daily life, we also compared the groups on variance of affect using one-way ANOVAs. Note that this was not nested data because each participant had a single (within-person) variance score based upon their own distribution of happiness or negative affect. The ANOVA was significant for negative affect variance, F (2,203) = 5.58, p < 0.01. Post-hoc comparisons using Dunnett’s t -test indicated that the anxious attachment group exceeded the secure attachment group, p < 0.01. The avoidant and secure attachment groups did not differ. The ANOVA for happiness variance was not significant, F (2,203) = 0.48.

The attachment styles were also differentiated by their appraisals of the self, others, and the situation. Relative to both insecure groups, secure individuals endorsed more positive views on all items tapping appraisals about the self. That is, both anxious and avoidant participants perceived themselves in a more negative manner and were less confident in their coping capacities. Consistent with our hypotheses, individuals with an anxious or avoidant style reported feeling less cared for by others than did those with a secure attachment. Participants with an anxious style also differed from their secure peers in that they felt more suspicious and mistreated in the moment. In terms of appraisals about the situation, compared to secure attachment, anxious attachment was associated with expressing decreased enjoyment and competence regarding current activities, as well as with reports that the current situation was less positive and more stressful. Avoidant participants perceived their immediate situation as less positive, but not as more stressful, than secure participants.

Regarding social appraisals and functioning, the attachment groups did not differ in terms of how often they were with other people at the time of the signal (on average, secure participants were alone 42.6% of the time, anxious participants 41.9% of the time, and avoidant participants 48.1% of the time). Participants with a secure style reported greater feelings of closeness than did those with an anxious or avoidant style. As expected, anxiously attached individuals were more likely than secure ones to report that they were alone because others did not want to be with them (i.e., perceived social rejection). Moreover, as compared with secure individuals, those with an avoidant attachment showed a decreased desire to be with others when alone, and an increased preference to be alone when with others. Unexpectedly, compared with the secure group, the anxious group also displayed a higher preference for being alone when with others.

Moderating Effects of Attachment Style on the Association of Social Context with Daily Life Experiences

Two sets of cross-level interaction analyses were conducted to examine the extent to which participants’ social context impacted the expression of attachment styles in daily life. Specifically, we examined whether attachment styles moderated the association of social contact (alone = 1; with others = 2) and social closeness when with others (“I feel close to this person [people]”; ranging from 1 to 7) with measures of affect, appraisals, and functioning in the moment (Table 2 ). Overall, the report of being with other people at the time of the signal was significantly associated with experiencing greater happiness, decreased negative affect, having more positive self-appraisals, feeling more cared for by others, as well as with viewing one’s situation more positively. However, these associations were not moderated by attachment style, indicating that the impact of social contact on daily life experiences was not differentially expressed for the attachment groups.

TABLE 2. Cross-level interactions of social contact and social closeness with daily life experiences.

The closeness of social contacts in the moment was also associated with the momentary experience of affect, appraisals, and functioning. However, in contrast to social contact, the effects of social closeness on daily life experiences were significantly moderated by attachment style. When in the presence of people they did not feel close to, anxious participants reported more negative and less positive experiences than did those with a secure attachment. Specifically, as closeness diminished, anxious individuals experienced greater decreases in happiness and increased negative affect (Figure 1 ), appraised their current situation as less positive and more stressful (Figure 2 ), experienced greater decreases in their ability to cope, and reported a stronger preference for being alone than their securely attached peers. Cross-level analyses also revealed that as closeness diminished, avoidant participants felt less cared for by others than did those with a secure attachment (Figure 3 ).

FIGURE 1. Cross-level interaction of attachment style with social closeness and affective experiences in daily life .

FIGURE 2. Cross-level interaction of attachment style with social closeness and situation appraisals in daily life .

FIGURE 3. Cross-level interaction of attachment style with social closeness and feeling cared for by others in daily life .

To our knowledge, the current study is the first to examine how adult attachment styles, as measured by interview, are expressed in daily life using ESM in a sample of non-clinical young adults. As hypothesized, we found that participants’ momentary affective states, cognitive appraisals, and social functioning varied in meaningful ways as a function of their attachment style. These results support the construct and ecological validity of the ASI as a sensitive measure of attachment styles. Furthermore, they extend previous research by demonstrating that the effects of attachment style on daily life experiences are manifested across a variety of contexts and are not limited to interactional settings. In addition, the present study investigated the impact of the social context on the expression of attachment styles in the moment. The findings indicated that insecure individuals are especially reactive to the subjective nature of social contacts in their everyday life, not simply to the impact of whether they are alone or with others.

Attachment Strategies in Daily Life

Overall, the results regarding the daily life expression of attachment styles confirmed our theory-based predictions. Relative to both anxious and avoidant participants, those holding a secure style reported greater feelings of happiness, more positive self-appraisals, viewed their current situation more positively, felt more cared for by others, and felt closer to the people they were with. These findings are consistent with previous work showing that secure attachment is associated with a sense of self-efficacy, optimistic appraisals toward life in general, as well as positive interpersonal attitudes ( Mikulincer and Shaver, 2007 , 2008 ). Moreover, the pattern of positive momentary experiences reported by secure, as compared to insecure, participants supports the notion that attachment security allows individuals to engage with their environment in a way that fosters psychological and relational benefits ( Siegel, 2012 ).

In the present study, the most pronounced differences emerged between the secure and anxious attachment groups. These differences showed that the daily experiences of individuals with an anxious style were consistent with the use of hyperactivating strategies. That is, compared with their secure peers, anxious participants approached their daily person-environment transactions with amplification of distress (e.g., higher negative affect, greater fear of losing control, higher subjective stress), decreased positive affect, and greater variability in the experience of negative affect. These results support Mikulincer and Shaver ’s ( 2003 , p. 109) characterization of anxiously attached people as possessing a “chaotic emotional architecture” that contributes to the dysregulation of negative affect. We also found that anxiously attached participants endorsed more negative and less positive appraisals about themselves and their current situation than their secure counterparts, which supports the negative effects of hyperactivating strategies on people’s cognitive appraisals. Moreover, relative to secure participants, anxious ones felt less cared for by others, less close to the people they were with, more suspicious, more mistreated, and, when alone, were more likely to hold attributions of not being wanted. This pattern of findings provides strong empirical evidence that the appraisals that anxious individuals make in the realm of daily life are characterized by a hypervigilance to interpersonal sources of threat and hypersensitivity toward rejection. The results also revealed that when anxiously attached participants were with others, they displayed a stronger preference for being alone than their secure peers. Although this finding was not expected, the cross-level interactions seem to suggest that this is driven by a heightened discomfort that arises when anxious individuals are in the presence of people with whom they do not feel close.

In regards to avoidantly attached participants, the results showed that their daily life experiences were consistent with the reliance on deactivating strategies. As predicted, compared with secure subjects, avoidant ones endorsed a stronger preference for being alone when with others and a decreased desire to be with others when alone. Additionally, relative to their secure peers, they tended to approach their person-environment transactions with decreased happiness and less positive views of their situation, but not with amplification of negative states. Avoidant participants also felt less cared for by others and less close to the people they were with than did secure participants. This is consistent with their psychological barriers toward closeness and possibly indicates that their lack of involvement in relationships that elicit closeness and care may reinforce their underlying models in a self-perpetuating manner. Avoidant individuals also reported more negative views of themselves than did those with a secure attachment. Although avoidantly attached people have often been conceptualized as holding a positive self-model ( Bartholomew and Horowitz, 1991 ), research suggests that their positive views of themselves reflect defensive processes of self-inflation ( Mikulincer and Shaver, 2007 ). It could be that when asked to report on their experiences in the moment, avoidant individuals are less capable of suppressing the vulnerable nature of their sense of self. Indeed, it has been posited that ESM assessments allow less room for people to resort to self-interpretation or use mental heuristics when reporting on their self-perceptions ( Delespaul, 1995 ).

The Impact of Social Context on the Expression of Attachment Styles

Contrary to our initial expectation, the impact of social context on the expression of attachment styles in the moment was only observed for social closeness and not for social contact. This finding is important because it highlights a boundary condition of the effects of attachment style in social contexts — namely, that the manifestation of attachment styles depends on the subjective appraisal of the closeness of social contacts, rather than on the simple presence of social interactions. The finding that it is social appraisals, not simply social contact, that interacts with attachment is compatible with the description of attachment as a “person by situation” interactionist theory that at its core involves appraisal of the social context.

Increased levels of perceived closeness were associated with differential responses for anxious and avoidant individuals. Compared with the secure group, the affective states, situation appraisals, coping capacities, and social functioning of the anxious group worsened as closeness diminished; or, seen from the opposite perspective, improved as closeness increased. This pattern of results may be interpreted to suggest that when in the presence of people they do not feel close to, anxious people’s preoccupation with rejection and approval is amplified and this permeates their subjective experiences. By contrast, increased levels of closeness might enhance their momentary sense of felt-security and provide them with the self-validation they long for, which in turn could bring about an improvement in their subjective experiences. The finding that greater closeness seemed to aid anxious participants with the regulation of various self-states (e.g., affect, coping, stress) resonates with the work of Pietromonaco and Barrett (2006) , who, using a variant of the RIR, concluded that individuals holding a preoccupied attachment valued their interacting partners more when the interactions had provided help with self-regulatory processess.

The results also demonstrated that as closeness diminished avoidant subjects felt less cared for by others than their secure peers. Because avoidant individuals approach their interpersonal interactions in a way that minimizes the possibility of frustration (in order to keep their attachment system deactivated), it may be that experiencing closeness disconfirms their low expectations (e.g., about others’ responsiveness) and thus makes them more perceptive to the caring attitudes of others. Notably, the fact that greater closeness affected appraisal about others, but not their self-states, is in line with the contention that avoidantly attached people resort to autoregulation (i.e., they turn to themselves to regulate their internal states; Solomon and Tatkin, 2011 ). Additional research is required to elucidate the specific psychological mechanisms that make up the experience of momentary closeness and how it is associated with beneficial effects for insecurely attached individuals.

Specificity of Attachment Processes in Daily Life

The results of this study are relevant to the broader debate in the attachment field regarding the specificity of attachment-related processes in adulthood (see Tidwell et al., 1996 ; Pietromonaco and Barrett, 1997 ; Torquati and Raffaelli, 2004 ). On the one hand, the fact that attachment styles predicted individual’s subjective experiences across the range of situations they encountered during the week, and not only those that were interaction-based, suggests that attachment styles are relevant features of personality functioning that have pervasive effects on how individuals experience their inner and outer worlds. On the other hand, the findings that attachment styles moderated the effects of perceived social closeness on daily life experiences (but not the effects of mere social contact on these experiences) highlights the fact that attachment styles are differentially expressed under relational circumstances that might bring attachment concerns to the fore. Thus, we believe that a richer understanding of attachment dynamics will come from efforts that examine their expression at both the individual and relational level.

Limitations and Future Directions

Additional research is warranted to address the limitations of the present study. First, we used a sample of college students with predominantly female participants. Future studies would benefit from assessing the expression of attachment styles in community samples with a wider age range and a more representative distribution in terms of gender. Second, it should be noted that the cross-level interactions of the effects of social closeness on the expression of attachment styles were interpreted in line with theoretical propositions from the attachment literature; nevertheless, given the correlational nature of these data, the opposite interpretation is also plausible (e.g., less coping capacity contributing to lower perceived closeness). Third, note that the attachment groups showed a broader pattern of significant results on the direct effects than the interactions. This likely demonstrates the robust nature of the direct effects and the fact that the interactions are computed over-and-above the direct effects. Thus, we want to be careful not to over-interpret the cross-level interaction effects. Nevertheless, we believe that the pattern of findings for the cross-level interactions indicates that anxious attachment (relative to secure attachment) is reactive to the nature of social contact, not simply any social contact; whereas avoidant attachment generally is not characterized by strong reactivity to social context (as measured in the current study). Fourth, this study focused exclusively on momentary appraisals of social closeness. Further research could expand upon the current findings by assessing the effects of variations in trait social closeness (e.g., Moore et al., 2014 ). Finally, it would also be important for future work to assess the extent to which our findings are generalizable across different cultures. Given that we found theoretically expected daily life correlates of attachment styles in a Spanish sample, the results would seem to fit with the notion that attachment strategies are universal characteristics ( van IJzendoorn and Sagi-Schwartz, 2008 ; van IJzendoorn and Bakermans-Kranenburg, 2010 ). However, studies in different cultures are needed to establish the cross-cultural ecological validity of attachment styles.

The extent to which attachment style differences are expressed in real time as individuals navigate their real-life settings has remained an area largely untapped by research in the attachment field. The present investigation provided a novel contribution by using an interview-based measure to assess adult attachment styles and by employing a random time-sampling procedure that demonstrated that the hallmark features of secure, anxious, and avoidant individuals are reflected in their day-to-day person-environment transactions. The current study further extends the validity of the attachment style construct to the realm of everyday life and, moreover, points to the utility of employing ESM for obtaining a more finely grained understanding of how the predictions derived from attachment theory play out in the natural flow of real life.

Author Contributions

TS contributed to study design, data collection, data management, and writing of the manuscript. TK contributed to study conception, study design, data analyses, and writing of the manuscript. SB contributed to data collection and critically revised the manuscript. MM contributed to data collection and critically revised the manuscript. CC contributed to data analyses and critically revised the manuscript. PS contributed to study design, provided input regarding data analyses, and critically revised the manuscript. NB-V was the principal investigator, conceived the study and contributed to study design, data collection, and writing of the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Plan Nacional de I+D PSI2011-30321-C02-01), Fundació La Marató de TV3 (091110), and Generalitat de Catalunya (Suport als Grups de Recerca 2014SGR1070). NB-V is supported by the Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA) Academia Award. We thank Agnès Ros-Morente and Erika Bedoya for their assistance with data collection and management.

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Keywords : adult attachment, Attachment Style Interview, experience sampling, ecological validity, individual differences

Citation: Sheinbaum T, Kwapil TR, Ballespí S, Mitjavila M, Chun CA, Silvia PJ and Barrantes-Vidal N (2015) Attachment style predicts affect, cognitive appraisals, and social functioning in daily life. Front. Psychol. 6:296. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00296

Received: 17 November 2014; Accepted: 02 March 2015; Published online: 18 March 2015

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2015 Sheinbaum, Kwapil, Ballespí, Mitjavila, Chun, Silvia and Barrantes-Vidal. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Neus Barrantes-Vidal, Departament de Psicologia Clínica i de la Salut, Facultat de Psicologia, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Attachment styles and contingencies of self-worth

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1 Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 525 E. University Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1109, USA. [email protected].
PMID: 15466598
DOI: 10.1177/0146167204264000

Previous research on attachment theory has focused on mean differences in level of self-esteem among people with different attachment styles. The present study examines the associations between attachment styles and different bases of self-esteem, or contingencies of self-worth, among a sample of 795 college students. Results showed that attachment security was related to basing self-worth on family support. Both the preoccupied attachment style and fearful attachment style were related to basing self-worth on physical attractiveness. The dismissing attachment style was related to basing self-worth less on others' approval, family support, and God's love.

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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | Psychology

Introduction to R

An informal workshop on the use of r for simulations and statistical modeling in psychological science 3, adult attachment theory and research.

A Brief Overview

Research on adult attachment is guided by the assumption that the same motivational system that gives rise to the close emotional bond between parents and their children is responsible for the bond that develops between adults in emotionally intimate relationships. The objective of this essay is to provide a brief overview of the history of adult attachment research, the key theoretical ideas, and a sampling of some of the research findings. This essay has been written for people who are interested in learning more about research on adult attachment.

Background: Bowlby's Theory of Attachment

The theory of attachment was originally developed by John Bowlby (1907 - 1990), a British psychoanalyst who was attempting to understand the intense distress experienced by infants who had been separated from their parents. Bowlby observed that separated infants would go to extraordinary lengths (e.g., crying, clinging, frantically searching) to prevent separation from their parents or to reestablish proximity to a missing parent. At the time of Bowlby's initial writings, psychoanalytic writers held that these expressions were manifestations of immature defense mechanisms that were operating to repress emotional pain, but Bowlby noted that such expressions are common to a wide variety of mammalian species, and speculated that these behaviors may serve an evolutionary function.

Drawing on ethological theory, Bowlby postulated that these attachment behaviors , such as crying and searching, were adaptive responses to separation from a primary attachment figure --someone who provides support, protection, and care. Because human infants, like other mammalian infants, cannot feed or protect themselves, they are dependent upon the care and protection of "older and wiser" adults. Bowlby argued that, over the course of evolutionary history, infants who were able to maintain proximity to an attachment figure via attachment behaviors would be more likely to survive to a reproductive age. According to Bowlby, a motivational system, what he called the attachment behavioral system , was gradually "designed" by natural selection to regulate proximity to an attachment figure.

The attachment behavior system is an important concept in attachment theory because it provides the conceptual linkage between ethological models of human development and modern theories on emotion regulation and personality. According to Bowlby, the attachment system essentially "asks" the following fundamental question: Is the attachment figure nearby, accessible, and attentive? If the child perceives the answer to this question to be "yes," he or she feels loved, secure, and confident, and, behaviorally, is likely to explore his or her environment, play with others, and be sociable. If, however, the child perceives the answer to this question to be "no," the child experiences anxiety and, behaviorally, is likely to exhibit attachment behaviors ranging from simple visual searching on the low extreme to active following and vocal signaling on the other (see Figure 1). These behaviors continue until either the child is able to reestablish a desirable level of physical or psychological proximity to the attachment figure, or until the child "wears down," as may happen in the context of a prolonged separation or loss. In such cases, Bowlby believed that young children experienced profound despair and depression.

Individual Differences in Infant Attachment Patterns

Although Bowlby believed that the basic dynamics described above captured the normative dynamics of the attachment behavioral system, he recognized that there are individual differences in the way children appraise the accessibility of the attachment figure and how they regulate their attachment behavior in response to threats. However, it wasn't until his colleague, Mary Ainsworth (1913 – 1999), began to systematically study infant-parent separations that a formal understanding of these individual differences was articulated. Ainsworth and her students developed a technique called the strange situation --a laboratory paradigm for studying infant-parent attachment. In the strange situation, 12-month-old infants and their parents are brought to the laboratory and, systematically, separated from and reunited with one another. In the strange situation, most children (i.e., about 60%) behave in the way implied by Bowlby's "normative" theory. They become upset when the parent leaves the room, but, when he or she returns, they actively seek the parent and are easily comforted by him or her. Children who exhibit this pattern of behavior are often called secure . Other children (about 20% or less) are ill-at-ease initially, and, upon separation, become extremely distressed. Importantly, when reunited with their parents, these children have a difficult time being soothed, and often exhibit conflicting behaviors that suggest they want to be comforted, but that they also want to "punish" the parent for leaving. These children are often called anxious-resistant . The third pattern of attachment that Ainsworth and her colleagues documented is called avoidant . Avoidant children (about 20%) don't appear too distressed by the separation, and, upon reunion, actively avoid seeking contact with their parent, sometimes turning their attention to play objects on the laboratory floor.

Ainsworth's work was important for at least three reasons. First, she provided one of the first empirical demonstrations of how attachment behavior is patterned in both safe and frightening contexts. Second, she provided the first empirical taxonomy of individual differences in infant attachment patterns. According to her research, at least three types of children exist: those who are secure in their relationship with their parents, those who are anxious-resistant, and those who are anxious-avoidant. Finally, she demonstrated that these individual differences were correlated with infant-parent interactions in the home during the first year of life. Children who appear secure in the strange situation, for example, tend to have parents who are responsive to their needs. Children who appear insecure in the strange situation (i.e., anxious-resistant or avoidant) often have parents who are insensitive to their needs, or inconsistent or rejecting in the care they provide. In the years that have followed, a number of researchers have demonstrated links between early parental sensitivity and responsiveness and attachment security.

Adult Romantic Relationships

Although Bowlby was primarily focused on understanding the nature of the infant-caregiver relationship, he believed that attachment characterized human experience from "the cradle to the grave." It was not until the mid-1980's, however, that researchers began to take seriously the possibility that attachment processes may play out in adulthood. Hazan and Shaver (1987) were two of the first researchers to explore Bowlby's ideas in the context of romantic relationships. According to Hazan and Shaver, the emotional bond that develops between adult romantic partners is partly a function of the same motivational system--the attachment behavioral system--that gives rise to the emotional bond between infants and their caregivers. Hazan and Shaver noted that the relationship between infants and caregivers and the relationship between adult romantic partners share the following features:

both feel safe when the other is nearby and responsive
both engage in close, intimate, bodily contact
both feel insecure when the other is inaccessible
both share discoveries with one another
both play with one another's facial features and exhibit a mutual fascination and preoccupation with one another
both engage in "baby talk"

On the basis of these parallels, Hazan and Shaver argued that adult romantic relationships, like infant-caregiver relationships, are attachments, and that romantic love is a property of the attachment behavioral system, as well as the motivational systems that give rise to caregiving and sexuality.

Three Implications of Adult Attachment Theory

The idea that romantic relationships may be attachment relationships has had a profound influence on modern research on close relationships. There are at least three critical implications of this idea. First, if adult romantic relationships are attachment relationships, then we should observe the same kinds of individual differences in adult relationships that Ainsworth observed in infant-caregiver relationships . We may expect some adults, for example, to be secure in their relationships--to feel confident that their partners will be there for them when needed, and open to depending on others and having others depend on them. We should expect other adults, in contrast, to be insecure in their relationships. For example, some insecure adults may be anxious-resistant : they worry that others may not love them completely, and be easily frustrated or angered when their attachment needs go unmet. Others may be avoidant : they may appear not to care too much about close relationships, and may prefer not to be too dependent upon other people or to have others be too dependent upon them.

Second, if adult romantic relationships are attachment relationships, then the way adult relationships "work" should be similar to the way infant-caregiver relationships work . In other words, the same kinds of factors that facilitate exploration in children (i.e., having a responsive caregiver) should facilitate exploration among adults (i.e., having a responsive partner). The kinds of things that make an attachment figure "desirable" for infants (i.e., responsiveness, availability) are the kinds of factors adults should find desirable in romantic partners. In short, individual differences in attachment should influence relational and personal functioning in adulthood in the same way they do in childhood.

Third, whether an adult is secure or insecure in his or her adult relationships may be a partial reflection of his or her experiences with his or her primary caregivers . Bowlby believed that the mental representations or working models (i.e., expectations, beliefs, "rules" or "scripts" for behaving and thinking) that a child holds regarding relationships are a function of his or her caregiving experiences. For example, a secure child tends to believe that others will be there for him or her because previous experiences have led him or her to this conclusion. Once a child has developed such expectations, he or she will tend to seek out relational experiences that are consistent with those expectations and perceive others in a way that is colored by those beliefs. According to Bowlby, this kind of process should promote continuity in attachment patterns over the life course, although it is possible that a person's attachment pattern will change if his or her relational experiences are inconsistent with his or her expectations. In short, if we assume that adult relationships are attachment relationships, it is possible that children who are secure as children will grow up to be secure in their romantic relationships. Or, relatedly, that people who are secure as adults in their relationships with their parents will be more likely to forge secure relationships with new partners.

In the sections below I briefly address these three implications in light of early and contemporary research on adult attachment.

Do We Observe the Same Kinds of Attachment Patterns Among Adults that We Observe Among Children?

The earliest research on adult attachment involved studying the association between individual differences in adult attachment and the way people think about their relationships and their memories for what their relationships with their parents are like. Hazan and Shaver (1987) developed a simple questionnaire to measure these individual differences. (These individual differences are often referred to as attachment styles , attachment patterns , attachment orientations , or differences in the organization of the attachment system .) In short, Hazan and Shaver asked research subjects to read the three paragraphs listed below, and indicate which paragraph best characterized the way they think, feel, and behave in close relationships:

A. I am somewhat uncomfortable being close to others; I find it difficult to trust them completely, difficult to allow myself to depend on them. I am nervous when anyone gets too close, and often, others want me to be more intimate than I feel comfortable being. B. I find it relatively easy to get close to others and am comfortable depending on them and having them depend on me. I don't worry about being abandoned or about someone getting too close to me. C. I find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I often worry that my partner doesn't really love me or won't want to stay with me. I want to get very close to my partner, and this sometimes scares people away.

Based on this three-category measure , Hazan and Shaver found that the distribution of categories was similar to that observed in infancy. In other words, about 60% of adults classified themselves as secure (paragraph B), about 20% described themselves as avoidant (paragraph A), and about 20% described themselves as anxious-resistant (paragraph C).

Although this measure served as a useful way to study the association between attachment styles and relationship functioning, it didn't allow a full test of the hypothesis that the same kinds of individual differences observed in infants might be manifest among adults. (In many ways, the Hazan and Shaver measure assumed this to be true.) Subsequent research has explored this hypothesis in a variety of ways. For example, Kelly Brennan and her colleagues collected a number of statements (e.g., "I believe that others will be there for me when I need them") and studied the way these statements "hang together" statistically (Brennan, Clark, & Shaver, 1998). Brennan's findings suggested that there are two fundamental dimensions with respect to adult attachment patterns (see Figure 2). One critical variable has been labeled attachment-related anxiety . People who score high on this variable tend to worry whether their partner is available, responsive, attentive, etc. People who score on the low end of this variable are more secure in the perceived responsiveness of their partners. The other critical variable is called attachment-related avoidance . People on the high end of this dimension prefer not to rely on others or open up to others. People on the low end of this dimension are more comfortable being intimate with others and are more secure depending upon and having others depend upon them. A prototypical secure adult is low on both of these dimensions.

Brennan's findings are critical because recent analyses of the statistical patterning of behavior among infants in the strange situation reveal two functionally similar dimensions: one that captures variability in the anxiety and resistance of the child and another that captures variability in the child's willingness to use the parent as a safe haven for support (see Fraley & Spieker, 2003a, 2003b). Functionally, these dimensions are similar to the two-dimensions uncovered among adults, suggesting that similar patterns of attachment exist at different points in the life span.

In light of Brennan's findings, as well as taxometric research published by Fraley and Waller (1998), most researchers currently conceptualize and measure individual differences in attachment dimensionally rather than categorically. That is, it is assumed that attachment styles are things that vary in degree rather than kind. The most popular measures of adult attachment style are Brennan, Clark, and Shaver's (1998) ECR and Fraley, Waller, and Brennan's (2000) ECR-R--a revised version of the ECR. [ Click here to take an on-line quiz designed to determine your attachment style based on these two dimensions. ] Both of these self-report instruments provide continuous scores on the two dimensions of attachment-related anxiety and avoidance. [ Click here to learn more about self-report measures of individual differences in adult attachment. ]

Do Adult Romantic Relationships "Work" in the Same Way that Infant-Caregiver Relationships Work?

There is now an increasing amount of research that suggests that adult romantic relationships function in ways that are similar to infant-caregiver relationships, with some noteworthy exceptions, of course. Naturalistic research on adults separating from their partners at an airport demonstrated that behaviors indicative of attachment-related protest and caregiving were evident, and that the regulation of these behaviors was associated with attachment style (Fraley & Shaver, 1998). For example, while separating couples generally showed more attachment behavior than nonseparating couples, highly avoidant adults showed much less attachment behavior than less avoidant adults. In the sections below I discuss some of the parallels that have been discovered between the way that infant-caregiver relationships and adult romantic relationships function.

Partner selection Cross-cultural studies suggest that the secure pattern of attachment in infancy is universally considered the most desirable pattern by mothers (see van IJzendoorn & Sagi, 1999). For obvious reasons there is no similar study asking infants if they would prefer a security-inducing attachment figure. Adults seeking long-term relationships identify responsive caregiving qualities, such as attentiveness, warmth, and sensitivity, as most "attractive" in potential dating partners (Zeifman & Hazan, 1997). Despite the attractiveness of secure qualities, however, not all adults are paired with secure partners. Some evidence suggests that people end up in relationships with partners who confirm their existing beliefs about attachment relationships (Frazier et al., 1997).

Secure base and safe haven behavior In infancy, secure infants tend to be the most well adjusted, in the sense that they are relatively resilient, they get along with their peers, and are well liked. Similar kinds of patterns have emerged in research on adult attachment. Overall, secure adults tend to be more satisfied in their relationships than insecure adults. Their relationships are characterized by greater longevity, trust, commitment, and interdependence (e.g., Feeney, Noller, & Callan, 1994), and they are more likely to use romantic partners as a secure base from which to explore the world (e.g., Fraley & Davis, 1997). A large proportion of research on adult attachment has been devoted to uncovering the behavioral and psychological mechanisms that promote security and secure base behavior in adults. There have been two major discoveries thus far. First and in accordance with attachment theory, secure adults are more likely than insecure adults to seek support from their partners when distressed. Furthermore, they are more likely to provide support to their distressed partners (e.g., Simpson et al., 1992). Second, the attributions that insecure individuals make concerning their partner's behavior during and following relational conflicts exacerbate, rather than alleviate, their insecurities (e.g., Simpson et al., 1996).

Avoidant Attachment and Defense Mechanisms According to attachment theory, children differ in the kinds of strategies they use to regulate attachment-related anxiety. Following a separation and reunion, for example, some insecure children approach their parents, but with ambivalence and resistance, whereas others withdraw from their parents, apparently minimizing attachment-related feelings and behavior. One of the big questions in the study of infant attachment is whether children who withdraw from their parents--avoidant children--are truly less distressed or whether their defensive behavior is a cover-up for their true feelings of vulnerability. Research that has measured the attentional capacity of children, heart rate, or stress hormone levels suggests that avoidant children are distressed by the separation despite the fact that they come across in a cool, defensive manner.

Recent research on adult attachment has revealed some interesting complexities concerning the relationships between avoidance and defense. Although some avoidant adults, often called fearfully-avoidant adults, are poorly adjusted despite their defensive nature, others, often called dismissing-avoidant adults, are able to use defensive strategies in an adaptive way. For example, in an experimental task in which adults were instructed to discuss losing their partner, Fraley and Shaver (1997) found that dismissing individuals (i.e., individuals who are high on the dimension of attachment-related avoidance but low on the dimension of attachment-related anxiety) were just as physiologically distressed (as assessed by skin conductance measures) as other individuals. When instructed to suppress their thoughts and feelings, however, dismissing individuals were able to do so effectively. That is, they could deactivate their physiological arousal to some degree and minimize the attention they paid to attachment-related thoughts. Fearfully-avoidant individuals were not as successful in suppressing their emotions.

Are Attachment Patterns Stable from Infancy to Adulthood?

Perhaps the most provocative and controversial implication of adult attachment theory is that a person's attachment style as an adult is shaped by his or her interactions with parental attachment figures. Although the idea that early attachment experiences might have an influence on attachment style in romantic relationships is relatively uncontroversial, hypotheses about the source and degree of overlap between the two kinds of attachment orientations have been controversial.

There are at least two issues involved in considering the question of stability: (a) How much similarity is there between the security people experience with different people in their lives (e.g., mothers, fathers, romantic partners)? and (b) With respect to any one of these relationships, how stable is security over time?

With respect to this first issue, it appears that there is a modest degree of overlap between how secure people feel with their mothers, for example, and how secure they feel with their romantic partners. Fraley, for example, collected self-report measures of one's current attachment style with a significant parental figure and a current romantic partner and found correlations ranging between approximately .20 to .50 (i.e., small to moderate) between the two kinds of attachment relationships. [ Click here to take an on-line quiz designed to assess the similarity between your attachment styles with different people in your life. ]

With respect to the second issue, the stability of one's attachment to one's parents appears to be equal to a correlation of about .25 to .39 (Fraley, 2002). There is only one longitudinal study of which we are aware that assessed the link between security at age 1 in the strange situation and security of the same people 20 years later in their adult romantic relationships. This unpublished study uncovered a correlation of .17 between these two variables (Steele, Waters, Crowell, & Treboux, 1998).

The association between early attachment experiences and adult attachment styles has also been examined in retrospective studies. Hazan and Shaver (1987) found that adults who were secure in their romantic relationships were more likely to recall their childhood relationships with parents as being affectionate, caring, and accepting (see also Feeney & Noller, 1990).

Based on these kinds of studies, it seems likely that attachment styles in the child-parent domain and attachment styles in the romantic relationship domain are only moderately related at best. What are the implications of such findings for adult attachment theory? According to some writers, the most important proposition of the theory is that the attachment system, a system originally adapted for the ecology of infancy, continues to influence behavior, thought, and feeling in adulthood (see Fraley & Shaver, 2000). This proposition may hold regardless of whether individual differences in the way the system is organized remain stable over a decade or more, and stable across different kinds of intimate relationships.

Although the social and cognitive mechanisms invoked by attachment theorists imply that stability in attachment style may be the rule rather than the exception, these basic mechanisms can predict either long-run continuity or discontinuity, depending on the precise ways in which they are conceptualized (Fraley, 2002). Fraley (2002) discussed two models of continuity derived from attachment theory that make different predictions about long-term continuity even though they were derived from the same basic theoretical principles. Each model assumes that individual differences in attachment representations are shaped by variation in experiences with caregivers in early childhood, and that, in turn, these early representations shape the quality of the individual's subsequent attachment experiences. However, one model assumes that existing representations are updated and revised in light of new experiences such that older representations are eventually "overwritten." Mathematical analyses revealed that this model predicts that the long-term stability of individual differences will approach zero. The second model is similar to the first, but makes the additional assumption that representational models developed in the first year of life are preserved (i.e., they are not overwritten) and continue to influence relational behavior throughout the life course. Analyses of this model revealed that long-term stability can approach a non-zero limiting value. The important point here is that the principles of attachment theory can be used to derive developmental models that make strikingly different predictions about the long-term stability of individual differences. In light of this finding, the existence of long-term stability of individual differences should be considered an empirical question rather than an assumption of the theory.

Outstanding Questions and Future Directions for Research on Adult Attachment

There are a number of questions that current and future research on attachment needs to address. For example, it is probably the case that, while some romantic relationships are genuine attachment relationships, others are not. It will be necessary for future researchers to find ways to better determine whether a relationship is actually serving attachment-related functions. Second, although it is clear why attachment behavior may serve an important evolutionary function in infancy, it is not clear whether attachment serves an important evolutionary function among adults. Third, we still don't have a strong understanding of the precise factors that may change a person's attachment style. In the interest of improving people's lives, it will be necessary to learn more about the factors that promote attachment security and relational well-being.

To learn more about attachment theory and research, please check out the book Omri, Gery, and I wrote.

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Adult Attachment, Stress, and Romantic Relationships

In this article, we discuss theory and research on how individuals who have insecure adult romantic attachment orientations typically think, feel, and behave when they or their romantic partners encounter certain types of chronic or acute stress. We first review basic principles of attachment theory and then discuss how two forms of attachment insecurity—anxiety and avoidance—are associated with unique patterns of emotion regulation in response to certain types of threatening/distressing situations. We then discuss a diathesis-stress process model that has guided our research, highlighting studies that provide support for certain pathways of the model.

During evolutionary history, protection from danger by a stronger/wiser figure was essential for the survival of infants and young children. To ensure sufficient care/protection, selection pressures produced an innate system—the attachment system—that motivates vulnerable individuals to seek close physical and emotional proximity to their primary caregivers, especially when they are distressed [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]. These behavioral tendencies increased the chances of surviving to reproductive age, which permitted the genes that coded for the attachment system to be passed on to offspring [ 4 ]. This principle is one of the fundamental tenets of attachment theory.

For several years, we and others have investigated how individuals who have different adult romantic attachment orientations think, feel, and behave in different types of stressful situations. Although the attachment system operates more visibly in infants and young children, Bowlby [ 1 , 2 ] maintained that attachment motives affect how people think, feel, and behave in close relationships “from the cradle to the grave” [5 p. 129]. Following these footsteps, we have conceptualized attachment insecurity as a diathesis that can generate maladaptive interpersonal responses to certain stressful or threatening events [ 6 ].

Principles of Attachment Theory

The primary purpose of the attachment behavioral system is to increase the likelihood that vulnerable individuals survive the perils of childhood [ 1 ]. The attachment system was crafted by natural selection to activate (turn on) when an individual experiences fear, anxiety, or related forms of distress. From an evolutionary standpoint, the system is designed to promote survival by maintaining proximity between parents (or other caregiving figures) and vulnerable infants, children, or adults. From a psychological standpoint, proximity reduces fear, anxiety, and related forms of distress, allowing individuals to engage in other life tasks. The attachment system is terminated (turned off) when individuals experience a sufficient reduction in fear, anxiety, or distress. When sufficient security is not achieved, however, the system remains partially or fully activated.

As individuals develop, they amass a mental record of their success at obtaining sufficient proximity/comfort from their attachment figures, beginning with their parents and continuing with close friends and romantic partners. These mental representations, termed working models [ 1 , 2 ], have two components: (1) a model of significant others (e.g., parents, close friends, romantic partners), which includes their responsiveness to one’s bids for proximity/comfortable in prior interactions, and (2) a model of the self, which includes information about the self’s ability to get sufficient proximity/comfort and one’s worth as a relationship partner.

Bowlby [ 1 , 2 , 3 ] believed that how individuals are treated by significant others across the lifespan—especially during times of stress—shapes the expectations, attitudes, and beliefs they have about future partners and relationships. These expectancies, attitudes, and beliefs operate as “if/then” propositions that guide how people think, feel, and behave, especially when they are upset (e.g., “ If I am upset, then I can count on my partner to support me”; [ 7 ]). Once developed, working models guide how individuals relate to their close partners and the interpersonal world around them, especially in stressful/threatening situations. Working models can, however, change over time in response to new experiences or events that strongly contradict them [ 2 ].

Adult Attachment Orientations

Two broad dimensions underlie adult romantic attachment orientations [ 8 , 9 , 10 ]. The first, avoidance , reflects the degree to which individuals are comfortable with closeness and emotional intimacy in relationships. Highly avoidant people have negative views of romantic partners and usually positive, but sometimes brittle, self-views [ 11 ]. Avoidant people strive to create and maintain independence, control, and autonomy in their relationships [ 12 ] because they believe that seeking psychological/emotional proximity to romantic partners is either not possible or undesirable. These beliefs motivate avoidant people to employ distancing/deactivating coping strategies [ 6 ] in which they defensively suppress negative thoughts and emotions to promote independence/autonomy. Persons who score low on avoidance (those who are more securely attached) are comfortable with intimacy and are willing to both depend on others and have others depend on them.

The second dimension, anxiety , assesses the degree to which individuals worry about being underappreciated or abandoned by their romantic partners. Highly anxious individuals are heavily invested in their relationships, and they yearn to get closer to their partners emotionally to feel more secure. Anxious individuals harbor negative self-views and guarded but hopeful views of their romantic partners [ 13 , 14 ]. These conflicted perceptions lead anxious individuals to question their worth, worry about losing their partners, and remain vigilant to signs their partners might be pulling away from them [ 15 ]. Thus, they are motivated to increase their deficient sense of felt security [ 12 ], which leads them to act in ways that sometimes smother or drive their partners away [ 16 ]. Because anxious persons do not know whether they can count on their partners, their working models amplify distress, making them feel even less secure. Accordingly, anxious people tend to use emotion-focused/hyperactivating coping strategies when distressed [ 6 ], which sustain or escalate their concerns/worries and often keeps their attachment systems chronically activated [ 17 ]. This partially explains why anxious individuals typically have less satisfying, more poorly adjusted relationships [ 18 ]. Persons who score low on anxiety (who are more securely attached) do not have these chronic worries and concerns. Although women score slightly higher on anxiety and men score slightly higher on avoidance in some samples, these gender differences are small, and gender rarely interacts with either attachment anxiety or avoidance in predicting relationship outcomes [ 18 ].

The Attachment Diathesis-Stress Process Model and Supporting Research

Our research has been structured around the Attachment Diathesis-Stress Process Model [ 19 ], shown and described in Figure 1 . According to the model, attachment insecurity is a diathesis capable of generating maladaptive responses to certain stressful/threatening events, depending on a person’s attachment orientation. We have examined three general categories of stress: external, internal, and chronic. We now discuss some of the studies that have provided support for certain pathways of the model.

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The Attachment Diathesis-Stress Process Model [ 19 ] can be understood from a normative (species-typical) and an individual difference perspective.

External Stress

One line of research testing our diathesis-stress model has investigated how external stress affects individuals with different attachment orientations in relationship contexts. When fear/anxiety is experimentally induced, for example, highly avoidant individuals who are more distressed seek less comfort/support from their romantic partners, and their highly avoidant partners (who are engaged in a different, non-stressful task) offer less comfort/support if their romantic partners appear more upset [ 20 , 21 ]. Less avoidant people (who tend to be more secure) display the opposite patterns. Another study has shown that, when separating at airports, highly avoidant individuals seek less physical contact with their romantic partners and display more distancing/distraction behaviors than less avoidant people [ 22 ]. Laboratory experiments have also shown that just thinking about the ultimate separation—death—is less likely to promote proximity-seeking in insecurely compared to securely attached people [ 23 , 24 ].

Further studies have investigated other types of relationship-relevant threats. For example, when romantic partners view and rate highly attractive people as potential romantic partners with each other (together), highly anxious individuals “get into the heads” of their partners and more accurately infer the relationship-threatening thoughts and feelings that their partners are actually having, which makes them feel less close to their partners. Less anxious individuals (who tend to be more secure) show opposite patterns [ 25 ]. When asked to imagine being permanently separated from their partners, highly anxious individuals have particularly strong negative emotional reactions, whereas highly avoidant individuals do not [ 26 , 27 ]. And highly avoidant men report less emotional distress following romantic break-ups [ 28 ], perhaps because they can better suppress negative thoughts and feelings about separations/break-ups [ 29 , 30 ].

Internal Stress

A second line of research testing our diathesis-stress model has examined internal stress, given that anxious working models may generate perceptions of heightened stress [ 19 , 31 ]. When highly anxious individuals discuss major (but not minor) conflict topics that could destabilize their relationship, they report more distress, display more dysfunctional behaviors, and view their partners and relationships more negatively. Less anxious people show the reverse patterns [ 32 , 33 ]. Importantly, however, these effects are substantially diminished when the partners of highly anxious people report being more committed to the relationship [ 34 ].

When discussing major versus minor jealousy or intimacy issues, highly avoidant individuals are less empathically accurate (i.e., they do not accurately infer what their partners are thinking or feeling during these discussions), whereas highly anxious individuals have significantly higher empathic accuracy (i.e., really wanting to know what their partners are thinking/feeling), but only when they are distressed and are discussing a major threat/problem [ 35 ]. And at time-points when they are most distressed during difficult conversations, less anxious (more secure) individuals are more calmed when their partners give them emotional support, whereas highly avoidant individuals are more calmed by instrumental support [ 36 , 37 ]. Avoidant people, therefore, benefit from support that does not impinge on their independence and autonomy.

In sum, when highly anxious people encounter internal stressors, they perceive their partners and relationships more negatively and behave in more dysfunctional, relationship-damaging ways. Highly avoidant individuals, in contrast, disengage behaviorally, emotionally, and/or cognitively when exposed to internal stressors. Higher partner commitment, however, appears to buffer highly anxious and highly avoidant people from acting on their negative working models. More secure individuals, by comparison, think, feel, and behave in more constructive ways, especially when acute, relationship-based stress is high [ 19 , 38 ]. These tendencies may allow secure people maintain higher levels of personal and relational well-being [ 18 ].

Chronic Life Stress

Additional studies have investigated chronic stress—especially the transition to parenthood [ 39 ]. Having a baby is a joyful but chronically stressful experience, making it ideal to test stress-diathesis processes, particularly if attachment insecurity makes individuals more vulnerable to personal and interpersonal problems [ 40 ]. Indeed, highly anxious women enter the transition to parenthood perceiving lower levels of spousal support, which predicts sharper declines in marital satisfaction [ 41 , 42 ] and increases in depressive symptoms [ 43 , 44 ] across the transition. Their husbands show parallel effects, including declines in both marital satisfaction and support-provision over time. Highly avoidant individuals—especially men—who believe their newborn is interfering with their personal or work lives [ 41 ] or who perceive they are doing too much childcare [ 45 ] also report steep declines in marital satisfaction. Less avoidant individuals (who tend to be more secure) report much smaller postnatal changes in satisfaction and depressive symptoms.

In sum, specific situations/events during the transition to parenthood tend to activate or exacerbate the cardinal concerns of highly anxious and highly avoidant people—abandonment/loss for anxious persons, and lack of autonomy/independence for avoidant persons—which in turn have negative effects on their marital satisfaction and depressive symptoms over time.

Conclusions

The reviewed research provides support for several of the pathways in the Attachment Diathesis-Stress Process Model. It does so by confirming that the vulnerabilities of highly avoidant and highly anxious individuals emerge primarily when they encounter specific types of stressful circumstances/events that activate their working models. Highly avoidant people are not always unsupportive, withdrawn, or uncooperative in their romantic relationships; instead, the defining attributes of avoidance are elicited by certain types of stressful situations, such as feeling pressure to give or receive support, to become more emotionally intimate, and/or to share deep personal emotions. Likewise, highly anxious people are not always clingy, demanding, or prone to engaging in dysfunctional conflict resolution tactics; rather, the prototypic features of anxiety are evoked by certain types of stressful situations, especially those that threaten the stability or quality of their current relationships.

Highly avoidant and highly anxious individuals, however, are less inclined to think, feel, and behave in line with their insecure working models when they are more dependent on their partners/relationships [ 46 ] or are involved with more committed partners [ 34 ]. Moreover, when they have stressful interactions with their partners, these individuals are less likely to react in “insecure” ways when their romantic partners buffer (emotionally and behaviorally regulate) their attachment-related concerns, which helps insecure partners experience less negative affect and behave more constructively [ 47 , 48 ]. To be successfully, however, these partner buffering attempts must be carefully tailored to meet the specific attachment-relevant needs, concerns, and worries of highly avoidant and highly anxious partners. Future research should explore the potential therapeutic implications of different forms of partner buffering in established relationships.

From a normative perspective , three types of negative events can activate the attachment system: (1) negative external events (e.g., dangerous or threatening situations), (2) negative relational events (e.g., relationship conflict, separation, abandonment), and (3) cognitive/emotional stressors (e.g., ruminating about negative events). These events elicit distress in virtually all people. Once aroused, distress triggers species-typical attachment motivations to seek proximity/support/reassurance from attachment figures (e.g., parents, close friends, romantic partners) in most people, even if they do not consciously feel or act on these motivations. These attachment motivations, in turn, instigate attachment behaviors that mitigate and regulate distress and perceptions of the partner and current situation. Perceptions of the partner/situation are also affected by how the partner behaves in the situation. However, the specific attachment behaviors that individuals display and the partner/relationship perceptions they have depend on their working models (see below). These enacted behaviors and perceptions then affect the personal and relational well-being that individuals feel, report, or display in the stressful situation. Attachment working models can impact all stages of the model, as depicted by the lines from attachment working models leading into each model stage. For example, working models can influence how distressed individuals feel (or acknowledge feeling) in response to certain types of negative/stressful events, and they govern the specific types of attachment motivations that are evoked when distress is experienced. Working models can also affect the types of attachment behaviors that individuals display once attachment motivations are triggered, how they perceive their partners in the situation, and how their partners behave. Each of these pathways can impact the quality of personal and relational well-being during or following the stressful event (e.g., relationship satisfaction, depression, relationship quality).

From an individual difference perspective , the Attachment Diathesis-Stress Process Model suggests that individuals with different attachment orientations should respond very differently when they encounter certain types of distressing situations. When highly anxious individuals face stressful events, they should be keenly aware they are upset and should want immediate assistance from their partners. Given their conflicted working models, however, anxious individuals should be motivated to reduce distress by doing whatever it takes to increase proximity with their partners. This process should be exacerbated by their tendency to use emotion-focused/hyperactivating coping strategies [ 6 , 19 ], which direct their attention to the source of distress, lead them to ruminate over “worse-case” outcomes, and divert their attention away from how to resolve the stressor, which is keeping their attachment systems activated. The attachment behaviors that highly anxious individuals exhibit, therefore, should involve intense and obsessive proximity/support/reassurance-seeking from their partners, which often may fail to reduce their distress. Because of their working models and use of emotion-focused coping styles, the partners of anxious individuals should tire of having to continually provide reassurance/support, which anxious individuals may perceive as rejection. They should also perceive their partner’s intentions, motives, and actions in less benevolent terms during the stressful situation, underestimating the care/support that their partners have provided or are willing to provide. These negative perceptions, in turn, should generate less personal and relational well-being following stressful events.

When dealing with stressful events, highly avoidant individuals may not be fully aware they are upset, and they should neither want nor seek help from their partners. In light of their negative, cynical working models, avoidant individuals should be motivated to reduce or contain any distress they feel by being self-reliant, which allows them to reestablish independence, autonomy, and personal control. This process should be facilitated by their use of avoidant/deactivating coping strategies [ 6 , 19 ], which defensively suppress conscious awareness of their distress and attachment needs and behaviors, at least in the short-run. Consequently, avoidant individuals should display attachment behaviors that permit some contact with their partners, but at a safe, emotionally comfortable distance and on terms dictated by them. Given both their negative working models and avoidant/deactivating coping tactics, the partners of avoidant individuals should offer them less reassurance/support, which avoidant individuals should prefer but still may interpret as rejection. Avoidant individuals should also perceive their partner’s intentions, motives, and behaviors in the stressful situation in less benevolent ways, leading them to underestimate the care/support their partners have already given them or are willing to provide. These negative perceptions should, in turn, result in less personal and relational well-being following stressful events.

Though not the focus of this article, when highly secure individuals (i.e., those who score lower on anxiety and/or avoidance) experience distressing situations/events, they should recognize they are upset and may need assistance from their attachment figures (partners), depending on the stressor and the skills they have to deal with it. Given their positive working models, secure individuals should be motivated to manage distress by drawing closer to their partners physically and emotionally to increase closeness and intimacy with them. This tendency should be facilitated by their use of problem-focused coping strategies [ 6 , 19 ], which allow them to resolve most problems constructively and well with appropriate assistance from their partners. The attachment behaviors that highly secure individuals should enact involve requesting or seeking proximity/comfort/support from their partners, which should help them dissipate distress so they can pursue other life tasks. Because of their positive working models and constructive, relationship-centered coping strategies, the partners of highly secure individuals should respond in more positive and constructive ways when highly secure individuals request comfort/care/support from them (unless their partners are insecure). Highly secure individuals should also perceive their partner’s intentions, motives, and actions in the situation as being more benevolent. These positive perceptions should lead to better personal and relational well-being following stressful events.

Describes how anxiously and avoidantly attached people think, feel, and behave when distressed
Reviews key principles of attachment theory
Indicates how attachment anxiety and avoidance are associated with different patterns of emotion regulation
Presents a diathesis-stress model that describes these processes in anxiously and avoidantly attached people

Acknowledgements

Some of the research reported in this article was support by National Institute of Mental Health grant R01-MH49599 to Jeffry A. Simpson and W. Steven Rholes.

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Introduction

The Current Study

Materials and Methods

Materials and Procedure

Statistical Method

Expression of Attachment Styles in Daily Life

Moderating Effects of Attachment Style on the Association of Social Context with Daily Life Experiences

Attachment Strategies in Daily Life

The Impact of Social Context on the Expression of Attachment Styles

Specificity of Attachment Processes in Daily Life

Limitations and Future Directions

Author Contributions

Conflict of Interest Statement

Acknowledgments

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Attachment styles and contingencies of self-worth

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Introduction to R

Background: Bowlby's Theory of Attachment

Individual Differences in Infant Attachment Patterns

Adult Romantic Relationships

Three Implications of Adult Attachment Theory

Do We Observe the Same Kinds of Attachment Patterns Among Adults that We Observe Among Children?

Do Adult Romantic Relationships "Work" in the Same Way that Infant-Caregiver Relationships Work?

Are Attachment Patterns Stable from Infancy to Adulthood?

Outstanding Questions and Future Directions for Research on Adult Attachment

Adult Attachment, Stress, and Romantic Relationships

Principles of Attachment Theory

Adult Attachment Orientations

The Attachment Diathesis-Stress Process Model and Supporting Research

External Stress

Internal Stress

Chronic Life Stress

Conclusions

Acknowledgements

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