reflective essay on attachment style

Attachment Styles and How They Affect Adult Relationships

Stephanie Huang

Project Manager

MED, Human Development and Psychology, Harvard University

Stephanie Huang holds a Master of Education degree from Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her academic interests mainly lie in the fields of developmental psychology, social-emotional learning, and informal education.

Learn about our Editorial Process

Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

On This Page:

Attachment styles refer to patterns of bonding that people learn as children and carry into their adult relationships. They’re typically thought to originate from the type of care one received in their earliest years.

The concept involves one’s confidence in the attachment figure’s availability as a secure base from which one can freely explore the world when not in distress and a safe haven from which one can seek support, protection, and comfort in times of distress.

What are the attachment styles?

• Secure Attachment : Securely attached individuals are comfortable with intimacy and can balance dependence and independence in relationships.
• Preoccupied Attachment (Anxious in Children) : Individuals with this attachment style crave intimacy and can be overly dependent and demanding in relationships.
• Dismissive Attachment (Avoidant in Children) : This style is characterized by a strong sense of self-sufficiency, often to the point of appearing detached. Individuals with dismissive attachment value their independence highly and may seem uninterested in close relationships.
• Fearful Attachment (Disorganized in Children) : Individuals with a fearful attachment style desire close relationships and fear vulnerability. They may behave unpredictably in relationships due to their internal conflict between a desire for intimacy and fear of it.

In humans, the behavioral attachment system does not conclude in infancy or even childhood. Instead, it is active throughout the lifespan, with individuals gaining comfort from physical and mental representations of significant others (Bowlby, 1969).

There appears to be a continuity between early attachment styles and the quality of later adult romantic relationships.

This idea is based on the internal working model , where an infant’s primary attachment forms a model (template) for future relationships.

Attachment Styles

Attachment styles are expectations people develop about relationships with others, and the first attachment is based on the relationship individuals had with their primary caregiver when they were infants.

Attachment styles describe people’s comfort and confidence in close relationships, fear of rejection and yearning for intimacy, and preference for self-sufficiency or interpersonal distance.

Attachment styles comprise cognitions relating to both the self (‘Am I worthy of love’) and others (‘Can I depend on others during times of stress’).

Adult attachment styles derived from past relationship histories are conceptualized as internal working models .

Here, individuals can hold either a positive or negative belief of self and a positive or negative belief of others, thus resulting in one of four possible adult attachment styles.

The model of others can also be conceptualized as the avoidant dimension of attachment, which corresponds to the level of discomfort a person feels regarding psychological intimacy and dependency.

Alternatively, the model of self can be conceptualized as the anxiety dimension of attachment, relating to beliefs about self-worth and whether or not one will be accepted or rejected by others (Collins & Allard, 2001).

Bartholomew and Horowitz proposed four adult attachment styles regarding working models of self and others, including secure, dismissive, preoccupied, and fearful.

Secure Attachment Characteristics

Securely attached adults tend to hold positive self-images and positive images of others, meaning that they have both a sense of worthiness and an expectation that other people are generally accepting and responsive.

As Children

Secure attachment occurs because the mother meets the emotional needs of the infant.

Children with a secure attachment use their mother as a safe base to explore their environment. They are moderately distressed when their mother leaves the room (separation anxiety) and seek contact with their mother when she returns.

They also show moderate stranger anxiety; they show some distress when approached by a stranger.

Adults who demonstrate a secure attachment style value relationships and affirm the impact of relationships on their personalities.

They display a readiness to recall and discuss attachments that suggest much reflection regarding previous relationships.

Secure adults display openness regarding expressing emotions and thoughts with others and are comfortable with depending on others for help while also being comfortable with others depending on them (Cassidy, 1994).

Notably, many secure adults may, in fact, experience negative attachment-related events, yet they can objectively assess people and events and assign a positive value to relationships in general.

Secure lovers characterized their most important romantic relationships as happy and trusting. They can support their partners despite the partners’ faults.

Their relationships also tend to last longer. Secure lovers believe that although romantic feelings may wax and wane, romantic love will never fade.

Through the statistical analysis, secure lovers were found to have had warmer relationships with their parents during childhood.

Preoccupied Attachment Characteristics

Individuals with a preoccupied attachment (called anxious when referring to children) hold a negative self-image and a positive image of others, meaning that they have a sense of unworthiness but generally evaluate others positively.

As such, they strive for self-acceptance by attempting to gain approval and validation from their relationships with significant others. They also require higher levels of contact and intimacy in relationships with others.

Children with this type of attachment are clingy to their mother in a new situation and are not willing to explore – suggesting that they do not have trust in her.

They are extremely distressed when separated from their mother. When the mother returns, they are pleased to see her and go to her for comfort, but they cannot be comforted and may show signs of anger towards her.

This type of attachment style occurs because the mother sometimes meets the infant’s needs and sometimes ignores their emotional needs, i.e., the mother’s behavior is inconsistent.

Such individuals crave intimacy but remain anxious about whether other romantic partners will meet their emotional needs. Autonomy and independence can make them feel anxious.

Additionally, they are preoccupied with dependency on their own parents and still actively struggle to please them.

In addition, they can become distressed should they interpret recognition and value from others as being insincere or failing to meet an appropriate level of responsiveness.

Their attachment system is prone to hyperactivation during times of stress, emotions can become amplified, and overdependence on others is increased (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2003).

Preoccupied lovers characterize their most important romantic relationships by obsession, desire for reciprocation and union, emotional highs and lows, and extreme sexual attraction and jealousy.

Preoccupied lovers often believe that it is easy for them to fall in love, yet they also claim that unfading love is difficult to find.

Compared with secure lovers, preoccupied lovers report colder relationships with their parents during childhood.

Anxious attachment  is also known as insecure resistant or anxious ambivalent .

Dismissive Attachment Characteristics

Dismissive attachment style is demonstrated by adults with a positive self-image and a negative image of others. Their internal working model is based on an avoidant attachment established during infancy.

Children with an avoidant attachment do not use the mother as a safe base; they are not distressed on separation from their caregiver and are not joyful when the mother returns. They show little stranger anxiety.

This type of attachment occurs because the mother ignores the emotional needs of the infant.

They prefer to avoid close relationships and intimacy with others to maintain a sense of independence and invulnerability. This means they struggle with intimacy and value autonomy and self-reliance (Cassidy, 1994).

Dismissive-avoidant adults deny experiencing distress associated with relationships and downplay the importance of attachment in general, viewing other people as untrustworthy.

According to Dr. Julie Smith, a clinical psychologist, these are the signs of an avoidant attachment style in adult relationships:

• When your partner seeks intimacy with you, the barriers go up. The more they try to get close, the more you pull back.
• You hold back on starting new relationships because trusting people is so hard.
• You sometimes end relationships to gain a sense of freedom.
• You keep your partner at arm’s length emotionally because it feels safer, but they often accuse you of being distant.

Dismissive lovers are characterized by fear of intimacy, emotional highs and lows, and jealousy. They are often unsure of their feelings toward their romantic partner, believing that romantic love can rarely last and that it is hard for them to fall in love (Hazan & Shaver, 1987).

Proximity seeking is appraised as unlikely to alleviate distress resulting in deliberate deactivation of the attachment system, inhibition of the quest for support, and commitment to handling distress alone, especially distress arising from the failure of the attachment figure to be available and responsive (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2003).

Dismissive individuals have learned to suppress their emotions at the behavioral level, although they still experience emotional arousal internally (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2005).

This has negative outcomes in terms of cutting themselves off strong feelings, whether their own or others, thus influencing their experiences of romantic relationships.

Fearful Attachment Characteristics

Adults with a fearful-avoidant attachment style (also referred to as disorganized) hold a negative model of self and also a negative model of others, fearing both intimacy and autonomy.

They display attachment behaviors typical of avoidant children, becoming socially withdrawn and untrusting of others.

The behavior of a fearful-avoidant child is very disorganized, hence why it is also known as disorganized attachment.

If the child and caregiver were to be separated for any amount of time, on the reunion, the child would act conflicted. They may initially run towards their caregiver but then seem to change their mind and either run away or act out.

In the eyes of a child with a fearful avoidant attachment, their caregivers are untrustworthy.

Children with a fearful avoidant attachment are at risk of carrying these behaviors into adulthood if they do not receive support to overcome this. They may struggle to feel secure in any relationship if they do not get help for their attachment style.

“Like dismissing avoidant, they often cope with distancing themselves from relationship partners, but unlike dismissing individuals, they continue to experience anxiety and neediness concerning their partner’s love, reliability, and trustworthiness” (Schachner, Shaver & Mikulincer, 2003, p. 248).

A fearful avoidant prefers casual relationships and may stay in the dating stage of the relationship for a prolonged period as this feels more comfortable for them.

This is not always because they want to, but because they fear getting closer to someone.

A study found that those with a fearful avoidant attachment style are likely to have more sexual partners and higher sexual compliance than other attachment styles (Favez & Tissot, 2019).

They may prefer to have more sexual partners as a way to get physically close to someone without having to also be emotionally vulnerable to them – thus meeting their need for closeness.

They could also be more sexually compliant due to having poorer boundaries and learning in childhood that their boundaries do not matter . It is important to remember that this is not the case for all fearful avoidants.

A partner with this attachment style may prefer to keep their partner at a distance so that things do not get too emotionally intense.

They may be reluctant to share too much of themselves to protect themselves from eventual hurt. If the relationship gets too deep or they are asked to share personal stories, the fearful-avoidant may shut down rapidly.

It is common for those with a fearful attachment style to have grown up in a household that is very chaotic and toxic. As such, the fearful-avoidant may expect that their romantic relationships as adults should also be chaotic.

If they are in a relationship with someone secure and calm, they may be suspicious of why this is. They may believe something must be wrong and may challenge their partner or create a problem to make the relationship more unsettled but familiar to them.

They tend to always expect something bad to happen in their relationship and will likely find any reason to damage the relationship so they do not get hurt.

They may blame or accuse their partner of things they have not done, threaten to leave the relationship, or test their partner to see if this makes them jealous. All these strategies may cause their partner to consider ending the relationship.

Continuity Hypothesis

According to John Bowlby (1969), later relationships are likely to be a continuation of early attachment styles (secure and insecure) because the behavior of the infant’s primary attachment figure promotes an internal working model of relationships, which leads the infant to expect the same in later relationships.

In other words, there will be continuity between early attachment experiences and later relationships. This is known as the continuity hypothesis.

According to the continuity hypothesis, experiences with childhood attachment figures are retained over time and used to guide perceptions of the social world and future interactions with others.

The attachment styles we develop as children through interactions with primary caregivers often persist into adulthood and influence our expectations, emotions, and behaviors in romantic relationships. Specifically, secure, anxious, and avoidant attachment styles tend to be continuous from infancy into adulthood romantic attachments.

Romantic Relationships

Attachment theory , developed by Bowlby to explain emotional bonding between infants and caregivers, has implications for understanding romantic relationships.

There appears to be a continuity between early attachment styles and the quality of later adult romantic relationships. This idea is based on the internal working model, where an infant’s primary attachment forms a model (template) for future relationships.

The internal working model influences a person’s expectation of later relationships thus affects his attitudes towards them. In other words there will be continuity between early attachment experiences and later relationships.

Adult relationships are likely to reflect early attachment style because the experience a person has with their caregiver in childhood would lead to the expectation of the same experiences in later relationships.

This is illustrated in Hazan and Shaver’s love quiz experiment. They conducted a study to collect information on participants’ early attachment styles and attitudes toward loving relationships. They found that those securely attached as infants tended to have happy, lasting relationships.

On the other hand, insecurely attached people found adult relationships more difficult, tended to divorce, and believed love was rare. This supports the idea that childhood experiences have a significant impact on people’s attitudes toward later relationships.

The continuity hypothesis is accused of being reductionist because it assumes that people who are insecurely attached as infants would have poor-quality adult relationships. This is not always the case. Researchers found plenty of people having happy relationships despite having insecure attachments. Therefore, the theory might be an oversimplification.

Brennan and Shaver (1995) discovered that there was a strong association between one’s own attachment type and the romantic partner’s attachment type, suggesting that attachment style could impact one’s choice of partners.

To be more specific, the study found that a secure adult was most likely to be paired with another secure adult, while it was least likely for an avoidant adult to be paired with a secure adult; when a secure adult did not pair with a secure partner, he or she was more likely to have an anxious-preoccupied partner instead.

Moreover, whenever an avoidant or anxious adult did not pair with a secure partner, he or she was more likely to end up with an avoidant partner; an anxious adult was unlikely to be paired with another Anxious adult.

Adult attachment style also impacts how one behaves in romantic relationships (jealousy, trust, proximity-seeking, etc.) and how long these relationships can last, as discussed in earlier paragraphs about Hazan and Shaver’s (1987) findings.

These are, in turn, related to overall relationship satisfaction. Brennan and Shaver (1995) found that inclining toward a secure attachment type was positively correlated with one’s relationship satisfaction, whereas being either more avoidant or anxious was negatively associated with one’s relationship satisfaction.

Regarding attachment-related behaviors within relationships, being inclined to seek proximity and trust others was positively correlated with one’s relationship satisfaction.

Being self-reliant, ambivalent, jealous, clingy, easily frustrated towards one’s partner, or insecure is generally negatively correlated with one’s relationship satisfaction.

The attachment style and related behaviors of one’s partners were also found to impact one’s relationship satisfaction. Not surprisingly, having a Secure partner increases one’s relationship satisfaction.

However, an avoidant partner was the only type of partner that seemed to contribute negatively towards one’s relationship satisfaction, while an Anxious partner had no significant impact in this aspect.

The partner’s inclination to seek proximity and trust others increased one’s satisfaction, while one’s partner’s ambivalence and frustration towards oneself decreased one’s satisfaction.

Parenting Style

There is evidence that attachment styles may be transmitted between generations.

Research indicates an intergenerational continuity between adult attachment types and their children, including children adopting the parenting styles of their parents. People tend to base their parenting style on the internal working model, so the attachment type tends to be passed on through generations of a family.

Main, Kaplan, and Cassidy (1985) found a strong association between the security of the adults’ working model of attachment and that of their infants’, with a particularly strong correlation between mothers and infants (vs. fathers and infants).

Additionally, the same study also found that dismissive adults were often parents to avoidant infants. In contrast, preoccupied adults were often parents to resistant/ambivalent infants, suggesting that how adults conceptualized attachment relationships had a direct impact on how their infants attached to them.

An alternative explanation for continuity in relationships is the temperament hypothesis which argues that an infant’s temperament affects how a parent responds and so may be a determining factor in infant attachment type. The infant’s temperament may explain their issues (good or bad) with relationships in later life.

Mental Health

A new study published in the British Journal of Clinical Psychology sheds light on how our attachment styles affect our mental health and behaviors during difficult times like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Using advanced statistical techniques, researchers found that people with insecure attachment styles (especially anxious and fearful-avoidant attachments) suffered more depression, anxiety, and loneliness than their securely attached peers.

The researchers surveyed over 1300 UK adults at two time points between April and August 2020 to understand connections between attachment styles, adherence to social distancing guidelines, and mental health. They used cutting-edge causal modeling methods to estimate the likely causal effects.

The results showed that anxious and fearful-avoidant participants had around 5-6% higher depression and anxiety, and were 17-18% lonelier than secure individuals.

Over time, they maintained these elevated mental health symptoms while secure participants’ levels decreased. Greater loneliness explains the poorer mental health of insecure groups.

Avoidant participants were less likely to follow social distancing rules than secure individuals, although the effect size was small. Attachment style did not predict mental health changes from timepoints 1 to 2.

The takeaway?

Our attachment style is a risk factor for worse mental health crises during difficult collective experiences like lockdowns. Insecure individuals are more prone to loneliness driving their anxiety and depression.

The study highlights the need for targeted interventions to alleviate loneliness and promote security.

A limitation is the use of categorical attachment measures, but the advanced statistics provide compelling evidence attachment causally influences our mental health and behaviors during COVID-19 .

Internal Working Models

• The social and emotional responses of the primary caregiver (usually a parent) provide the infant with information about the world and other people and how they view themselves as individuals.
• For example, the extent to which an individual perceives himself/herself as worthy of love and care and information regarding the availability and reliability of others.
• John Bowlby (1969) referred to this knowledge as an internal working model , which begins as a mental and emotional representation of the infant’s first attachment relationship and forms the basis of an individual’s attachment style.
• The attachment continuity hypothesis states that the attachment style formed in infancy between child and caregiver remains relatively stable over time and continues to influence attachment behaviors in future close relationships.
• Romantic relationships are likely to reflect early attachment style because the experience a person has with their caregiver in childhood would lead to the expectation of the same experiences in later relationships, such as parents, friends, and romantic partners (Bartholomew and Horowitz, 1991).
• However, there is evidence that attachment styles are fluid and demonstrate fluctuations across the lifespan (Waters, Weinfield, & Hamilton, 2000).
• Other researchers have proposed that rather than a single internal working model, which is generalized across relationships, each type of relationship comprises a different working model. This means a person could be securely attached to their parents but insecurely attached in romantic relationships.

Researchers have proposed that working models are interconnected within a complex hierarchical structure (Collins & Read, 1994).

For example, the highest-level model comprises beliefs and expectations across all types of relationships, and lower-level models hold general rules about specific relations, such as romantic or parental, underpinned by models specific to events within a relationship with a single person.

How Attachment Style Is Measured

Children: ainsworth’s strange situation.

Ainsworth proposed the ‘sensitivity hypothesis,’ which states that the more responsive the mother is to the infant during their early months, the more secure their attachment will be.

To test this, she designed the ‘Strange Situation’ to observe attachment security in children within the context of caregiver relationships.

The child and mother experience a range of scenarios in an unfamiliar room. The procedure involves a series of eight episodes lasting approximately 3 minutes each, whereby a mother, child, and stranger are introduced, separated, and reunited.

Mary Ainsworth classified infants into one of three attachment styles; insecure avoidant (‘A’), secure (‘B’), or insecure ambivalent (‘C’).

A fourth attachment style, disorganized , was later identified (Main & Solomon, 1990).

Each type of attachment style comprises a set of attachment behavioral strategies used to achieve proximity with the caregiver and a feeling of security.

From an evolutionary perspective, an infant’s attachment classification (A, B, or C) is an adaptive response to the characteristics of the caregiving environment.

Ainsworth’s maternal sensitivity hypothesis argues that a child’s attachment style depends on their mother’s behavior towards them.

• ‘Sensitive’ mothers are responsive to the child’s needs and respond to their moods and feelings correctly. Sensitive mothers are more likely to have securely attached children.
• In contrast, mothers who are less sensitive towards their child, for example, those who respond to the child’s needs incorrectly or who are impatient or ignore the child, are likely to have insecurely attached children.

Adult Attachment Interview

Mary Main and her colleagues developed the Adult Attachment Interview that asked for descriptions of early attachment-related events and for the adults’ sense of how these relationships and events had affected adult personalities (George, Kaplan, & Main, 1984).

It is noteworthy that the Adult Attachment Interview assessed “the security of the self in relation to attachment in its generality rather than in relation to any particular present or past relationship” (Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985).

For example, the general state of mind regarding attachment rather than how one is attached to another specific individual.

Main, Kaplan, and Cassidy (1985) analyzed adults’ responses to the Adult Attachment Interview and observed three major patterns in the way adults recounted and interpreted childhood attachment experiences and relationships in general:

• Secure (Autonomous)
• Dismissive-Avoidant Attachment
• Preoccupied (Anxious) Attachment

Can Your Attachment Style Change?

In the world of attachment studies, a big question is whether our ideas about relationships are kind of like a one-size-fits-all thing, working the same way across all relationships, or if they’re specific to particular relationships.  Some experts, like Kobak (1994), have explored this.

So, one way to look at it is as an “individual difference.” This means that our attachment styles, our inner guides for how we connect with people, stay pretty much the same over time.

These styles are based on our experiences with people we’re close to, like parents, friends, and romantic partners. Bartholomew and Horowitz (1991) think that how we act in relationships tends to be consistent, no matter who we’re with.

On the flip side, some folks believe that our attachment styles can change depending on the type of relationship. So, instead of one all-encompassing inner model for relationships, we might have different models for different types of connections. This means that you could be feeling secure with your parents but insecure in your romantic relationships.

A study with young adults showed that people have different attachment styles for various types of relationships, like with parents, friends, and romantic partners (Caron et al., 2012).

Researchers have suggested that these inner models are like a set of Russian dolls, with a big one that covers all types of relationships and smaller ones for specific types, like romance or family. These smaller ones are built on even smaller models, like beliefs about things that happen within one relationship.

There’s evidence supporting the idea that we have multiple internal working models because people can have a lot of different thoughts and feelings about themselves and others. And, while these specific relationship models are related to our overall generalized inner models, the connection isn’t super strong.

It means that our beliefs about ourselves and our partners in one type of relationship are somewhat separate from our broader views (Cozzarelli, Hoekstra, & Bylsma, 2000).

So, in a nutshell, our general ideas about relationships cover a wide range, while our specific thoughts about certain relationships are just a piece of the bigger picture.

Additionally, it is also noteworthy that one’s attachment style may alter over time as well.

Another interesting thing is that your attachment style can change over time . In different studies, about 70% of people had relatively stable attachment styles, while the other 30% were more flexible.

Baldwin and Fehr (1995) discovered that 30% of adults changed their attachment styles fairly quickly, sometimes in as little as a week or a few months. People who initially identified as anxious-ambivalent were the most likely to change.

In a 20-year longitudinal study , Waters et al. (2000) conducted the Adult Attachment Interview with young adults who had participated in the Strange Situation experiment 20 years ago. They found that 72% of the participants received the same secure vs. insecure attachment classification s as they did during infancy.

The remaining participants did change in terms of attachment patterns, with the majority – though not all – of them having experienced major negative life events.

Such findings suggest that attachment style assessments should be interpreted more prudently; furthermore, there is always the possibility for change – and it need not be related to negative events, either.

Bowlby’s (1969) theory holds that internal working models can become more resistant to change over time in a stable environment, but change is still possible over development. Attachment security and insecurity can be seen as diverging pathways – the further one progresses down one path, the harder it is to switch to the other.

Further Information

• How To Know If Your Date Has A Secure Attachment Style
• How To Move From Anxious Attachment To Secure
• BPS Article- Overrated: The predictive power of attachment
• Scoring for the Strange Situation
• A theoretical review of the infant-mother relationship
• Cross-cultural Patterns of Attachment: A Meta-Analysis of the Strange Situation
• How Attachment Style Changes Through Multiple Decades Of Life

Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the strange situation . Lawrence Erlbaum.

Baldwin, M.W., & Fehr, B. (1995). On the instability of attachment style ratings. Personal Relationships, 2, 247-261.

Bartholomew, K., & Horowitz, L.M. (1991). Attachment Styles Among Young Adults: A Test of a Four-Category Model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61 (2), 226–244.

Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and Loss: Volume I. Attachment . London: Hogarth Press.

Brennan, K. A., Clark, C. L., & Shaver, P. R. (1998). Self-report measurement of adult attachment: An integrative overview. In J. A. Simpson & W. S. Rholes (Eds.), Attachment theory and close relationships (p. 46–76). The Guilford Press.

Brennan, K. A., & Shaver, P. R. (1995). Dimensions of adult attachment, affect regulation, and romantic relationship functioning. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21 (3), 267–283.

Cassidy, J., & Shaver, P. R. (Eds.). (1999).  Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications . Rough Guides.

Caron, A., Lafontaine, M., Bureau, J., Levesque, C., and Johnson, S.M. (2012). Comparisons of Close Relationships: An Evaluation of Relationship Quality and Patterns of Attachment to Parents, Friends, and Romantic Partners in Young Adults. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 44 (4), 245-256.

Collins, N. L., & Read, S. J. (1994). Cognitive representations of adult attachment: The structure and function of working models. In K. Bartholomew & D. Perlman (Eds.) Advances in personal relationships, Vol. 5: Attachment processes in adulthood  (pp. 53-90). London: Jessica Kingsley.

George, C., Kaplan, N., & Main, M. (1984). The Adult Attachment Interview. Unpublished manuscript, University of California at Berkeley.

Harlow, H. (1958). The nature of love. American Psychologist, 13 , 573-685.

Hazan, C., & Shaver, P. (1987). Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52 (3), 511–524.

Main, M., Kaplan, N., & Cassidy, J. (1985). Security in infancy, childhood and adulthood: A move to the level of representation. In I. Bretherton & E. Waters (Eds.), Growing points of attachment theory and research. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 50 (1-2), 66-104.

Main, M., & Solomon, J. (1986). Discovery of an insecure-disorganized/disoriented attachment pattern. In T. B. Brazelton & M. W. Yogman (Eds.), Affective development in infancy . Ablex Publishing.

Vowels, L. M., Vowels, M. J., Carnelley, K. B., Millings, A., & Gibson‐Miller, J. (2023). Toward a causal link between attachment styles and mental health during the COVID‐19 pandemic.  British Journal of Clinical Psychology .

Waters, E., Merrick, S., Treboux, D., Crowell, J., & Albersheim, L. (2000). Attachment security in infancy and early adulthood: A twenty-year longitudinal study. Child Development, 71 (3), 684-689.

Waters, E., Weinfield, N. S., & Hamilton, C. E. (2000). The stability of attachment security from infancy to adolescence and early adulthood: General discussion.  Child Development, 71 (3), 703-706.

• Bipolar Disorder
• Therapy Center
• When To See a Therapist
• Types of Therapy
• Best Online Therapy
• Best Couples Therapy
• Best Family Therapy
• Managing Stress
• Sleep and Dreaming
• Understanding Emotions
• Self-Improvement
• Healthy Relationships
• Student Resources
• Personality Types
• Guided Meditations
• Verywell Mind Insights
• 2024 Verywell Mind 25
• Mental Health in the Classroom
• Editorial Process
• Meet Our Review Board
• Crisis Support

What Is Attachment Theory?

The Importance of Early Emotional Bonds

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

• Attachment Theory
• Stages of Attachment

Attachment Styles

Attachment theory focuses on relationships and bonds (particularly long-term) between people, including those between a parent and child and between romantic partners. It is a psychological explanation for the emotional bonds and relationships between people.

This theory suggests that people are born with a need to forge bonds with caregivers as children. These early bonds may continue to have an influence on attachments throughout life.

History of the Attachment Theory

British psychologist John Bowlby was the first attachment theorist. He described attachment as a "lasting psychological connectedness between human beings." Bowlby was interested in understanding the anxiety and distress that children experience when separated from their primary caregivers.

Thinkers like Freud suggested that infants become attached to the source of pleasure. Infants, who are in the oral stage of development, become attached to their mothers because she fulfills their oral needs.

Some of the earliest behavioral theories suggested that attachment was simply a learned behavior. These theories proposed that attachment was merely the result of the feeding relationship between the child and the caregiver. Because the caregiver feeds the child and provides nourishment, the child becomes attached.

Bowlby observed that feedings did not diminish separation anxiety. Instead, he found that attachment was characterized by clear behavioral and motivation patterns. When children are frightened, they seek proximity from their primary caregiver in order to receive both comfort and care.

Understanding Attachment

Attachment is an emotional bond with another person. Bowlby believed that the earliest bonds formed by children with their caregivers have a tremendous impact that continues throughout life. He suggested that attachment also serves to keep the infant close to the mother, thus improving the child's chances of survival.

Bowlby viewed attachment as a product of evolutionary processes. While the behavioral theories of attachment suggested that attachment was a learned process, Bowlby and others proposed that children are born with an innate drive to form attachments with caregivers.

Throughout history, children who maintained proximity to an attachment figure were more likely to receive comfort and protection, and therefore more likely to survive to adulthood. Through the process of natural selection, a motivational system designed to regulate attachment emerged.

The central theme of attachment theory is that primary caregivers who are available and responsive to an infant's needs allow the child to develop a sense of security. The infant learns that the caregiver is dependable, which creates a secure base for the child to then explore the world.

So what determines successful attachment? Behaviorists suggest that it was food that led to forming this attachment behavior, but Bowlby and others demonstrated that nurturance and responsiveness were the primary determinants of attachment.

Ainsworth's "Strange Situation"

In her research in the 1970s, psychologist Mary Ainsworth expanded greatly upon Bowlby's original work. Her groundbreaking "strange situation" study  revealed the profound effects of attachment on behavior. In the study, researchers observed children between the ages of 12 and 18 months as they responded to a situation in which they were briefly left alone and then reunited with their mothers.

Based on the responses the researchers observed, Ainsworth described three major styles of attachment: secure attachment, ambivalent-insecure attachment, and avoidant-insecure attachment. Later, researchers Main and Solomon (1986) added a fourth attachment style called disorganized-insecure attachment based on their own research.

A number of studies since that time have supported Ainsworth's attachment styles and have indicated that attachment styles also have an impact on behaviors later in life.

Maternal Deprivation Studies

Harry Harlow's infamous studies on maternal deprivation and social isolation during the 1950s and 1960s also explored early bonds. In a series of experiments, Harlow demonstrated how such bonds emerge and the powerful impact they have on behavior and functioning.  

In one version of his experiment, newborn rhesus monkeys were separated from their birth mothers and reared by surrogate mothers. The infant monkeys were placed in cages with two wire-monkey mothers. One of the wire monkeys held a bottle from which the infant monkey could obtain nourishment, while the other wire monkey was covered with a soft terry cloth.

While the infant monkeys would go to the wire mother to obtain food, they spent most of their days with the soft cloth mother. When frightened, the baby monkeys would turn to their cloth-covered mother for comfort and security.

Harlow's work also demonstrated that early attachments were the result of receiving comfort and care from a caregiver rather than simply the result of being fed.

The Stages of Attachment

Researchers Rudolph Schaffer and Peggy Emerson analyzed the number of attachment relationships that infants form in a longitudinal study with 60 infants. The infants were observed every four weeks during the first year of life, and then once again at 18 months.

Based on their observations, Schaffer and Emerson outlined four distinct phases of attachment, including:

Pre-Attachment Stage

From birth to 3 months, infants do not show any particular attachment to a specific caregiver. The infant's signals, such as crying and fussing, naturally attract the attention of the caregiver and the baby's positive responses encourage the caregiver to remain close.

Indiscriminate Attachment

Between 6 weeks of age to 7 months, infants begin to show preferences for primary and secondary caregivers. Infants develop trust that the caregiver will respond to their needs. While they still accept care from others, infants start distinguishing between familiar and unfamiliar people, responding more positively to the primary caregiver.

Discriminate Attachment

At this point, from about 7 to 11 months of age, infants show a strong attachment and preference for one specific individual. They will protest when separated from the primary attachment figure (separation anxiety), and begin to display anxiety around strangers (stranger anxiety).

Multiple Attachments

After approximately 9 months of age, children begin to form strong emotional bonds with other caregivers beyond the primary attachment figure. This often includes a second parent, older siblings, and grandparents.

Factors That Influence Attachment

While this process may seem straightforward, there are some factors that can influence how and when attachments develop, including:

• Opportunity for attachment : Children who do not have a primary care figure, such as those raised in orphanages, may fail to develop the sense of trust needed to form an attachment.
• Quality caregiving : When caregivers respond quickly and consistently, children learn that they can depend on the people who are responsible for their care, which is the essential foundation for attachment. This is a vital factor.

There are four patterns of attachment, including:

• Ambivalent attachment : These children become very distressed when a parent leaves. Ambivalent attachment style is considered uncommon, affecting an estimated 7% to 15% of U.S. children. As a result of poor parental availability, these children cannot depend on their primary caregiver to be there when they need them.
• Avoidant attachment :   Children with an avoidant attachment tend to avoid parents or caregivers, showing no preference between a caregiver and a complete stranger. This attachment style might be a result of abusive or neglectful caregivers. Children who are punished for relying on a caregiver will learn to avoid seeking help in the future.
• Disorganized attachment : These children display a confusing mix of behavior, seeming disoriented, dazed, or confused. They may avoid or resist the parent. Lack of a clear attachment pattern is likely linked to inconsistent caregiver behavior. In such cases, parents may serve as both a source of comfort and fear, leading to disorganized behavior.
• Secure attachment : Children who can depend on their caregivers show distress when separated and joy when reunited. Although the child may be upset, they feel assured that the caregiver will return. When frightened, securely attached children are comfortable seeking reassurance from caregivers. This is the most common attachment style.

The Lasting Impact of Early Attachment

Children who are securely attached as infants tend to develop stronger self-esteem and better self-reliance as they grow older. These children also tend to be more independent, perform better in school, have successful social relationships, and experience less depression and anxiety.

Research suggests that failure to form secure attachments early in life can have a negative impact on behavior in later childhood and throughout life.

Children diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), conduct disorder (CD), or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) frequently display attachment problems, possibly due to early abuse, neglect, or trauma. Children adopted after the age of 6 months may have a higher risk of attachment problems.

Attachment Disorders

In some cases, children may also develop attachment disorders. There are two attachment disorders that may occur: reactive attachment disorder (RAD) and disinhibited social engagement disorder (DSED).

• Reactive attachment disorder occurs when children do not form healthy bonds with caregivers. This is often the result of early childhood neglect or abuse and results in problems with emotional management and patterns of withdrawal from caregivers.
• Disinhibited social engagement disorder affects a child's ability to form bonds with others and often results from trauma, abandonment, abuse, or neglect. It is characterized by a lack of inhibition around strangers, often leading to excessively familiar behaviors around people they don't know and a lack of social boundaries.

Adult Attachments

Although attachment styles displayed in adulthood are not necessarily the same as those seen in infancy, early attachments can have a serious impact on later relationships. Adults who were securely attached in childhood tend to have good self-esteem, strong romantic relationships, and the ability to self-disclose to others.

A Word From Verywell

Our understanding of attachment theory is heavily influenced by the early work of researchers such as John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth. Today, researchers recognize that the early relationships children have with their caregivers play a critical role in healthy development. 

Such bonds can also have an influence on romantic relationships in adulthood. Understanding your attachment style may help you look for ways to become more secure in your relationships.

Bowlby J. Attachment and Loss . Basic Books.

Bowlby J. Attachment and loss: Retrospect and prospect . Am J Orthopsychiatry . 1982;52(4):664-678. doi:10.1111/j.1939-0025.1982.tb01456.x

Draper P, Belsky J. Personality development in the evolutionary perspective . J Pers. 1990;58(1):141-61. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.1990.tb00911.x

Ainsworth MD, Bell SM. Attachment, exploration, and separation: Illustrated by the behavior of one-year-olds in a strange situation . Child Dev . 1970;41(1):49-67. doi:10.2307/1127388

Main M, Solomon J. Discovery of a new, insecure-disorganized/disoriented attachment pattern. In: Brazelton TB, Yogman M, eds., Affective Development in Infancy. Ablex.

Harlow HF. The nature of love . American Psychologist. 1958;13(12):673-685. doi:10.1037/h0047884

Schaffer HR, Emerson PE. The development of social attachments in infancy . Monogr Soc Res Child Dev. 1964;29:1-77. doi:10.2307/1165727

Lyons-Ruth K. Attachment relationships among children with aggressive behavior problems: The role of disorganized early attachment patterns . J Consult Clin Psychol. 1996;64(1):64-73. doi:https:10.1037/0022-006X.64.1.64

Young ES, Simpson JA, Griskevicius V, Huelsnitz CO, Fleck C.  Childhood attachment and adult personality: A life history perspective . Self and Identity . 2019;18:1:22-38. doi:10.1080/15298868.2017.1353540

Ainsworth MDS, Blehar MC, Waters E, Wall S.  Patterns of Attachment: A Psychological Study of the Strange Situation . Erlbaum.

Ainsworth MDS. Attachments and other affectional bonds across the life cycle. In: Attachment Across the Life Cycle . Parkes CM, Stevenson-Hinde J, Marris P, eds. Routledge.

Bowlby J. The nature of the child's tie to his mother . Int J Psychoanal . 1958;39:350-371.

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Attachment Theory and Emotion Experience in Life Essay

Introduction, the attachment theory and life experiences, works cited.

This paper reports on the attachment theory and how life experience affects one’s emotional attachment to others. Attachment theory advanced by John Bowlby in the early 1950s, seeks to explain how early life relations affects an individual’s emotional bonding in future Hutchison (89).

The theory gives an understanding of the different personalities as relates to emotional relationships. The theory was first focused on the relationship between children and their parents, but was later expanded to look at the whole lifespan. The theory looks at ones attachment as being influenced by both psychological conditions and the social environment.

According to the proponents of the attachment theory, children develop a bond with their caregivers, which grow into an emotional bond. Further research on the theory indicates that life experiences in childhood direct the course of one’s personality as well as the social and emotional development throughout his or her life.

Besides the explanation advanced by the theory regarding the connection between a baby and its mother or a care giver, the theory also seeks to explain the attachment between adults Hutchison (43). Among adults, an emotional attachment is felt more especially during bereavement or separation of spouses. Babies are born without the ability to move or feed themselves.

They depend on care givers to for these needs; they however have pre-programmed set of behavior that comes into action due to the environmental stimuli. Environmental stimuli may trigger a sense of fear or distress in the baby making it cry for help from the mother or the care giver. The protection or comfort offered to the baby makes it develop a stronger emotional bond with the mother and others who are closer to it.

Children grow to relate comfort from distress to the people who are close to them during their early stages of development. The nature of the environment a child grows in, together with the “psychological framework builds up a child’s internal working model” Hutchison (52).

The internal working model comprises of the development of expectations that an individual perceives in social interactions. The theory explains the effect of challenging parenting such as; neglect or abuse. Parents and caregivers should endeavor to develop an environment that makes children feel secure and comfortable.

The type of relationship parents establish with their children at their early stages of development determines the type of emotional attachment a child develops with them. A child who grows up in a loving and sensitive environment develops secure relationships in with others.

Such a child grows to recognize others as being caring, loving and reliable. They also develop high self esteem and learn to deal with negative feelings. Research indicates that people who grow up in secure attachment relationships are able to demonstrate good social aptitude throughout their life.

On the contrary, children brought up in unsecure environment develop an avoidant attachment. An unsecure environment to children is often characterized by fear, anxiety and rejection. This type of environment makes a child make children to downplay their emotional feelings.

There is a group of children who grow up with care givers that are not consistent in responding to their emotional needs. Their care givers are sometimes sensitive, and sometimes insensitive to their feelings. Such children develop “an attachment seeking habit as they try to conquer the insensitivity of their caregivers” Hutchison (34).

This sort of behavior by children is referred to as ambivalent attachment, where the children seek to compensate for the inconsistent responsiveness by the caregiver. Such a child tries to manage other people’s attention through behavior sets such as; seduction, bullying rage and necessity.

Hutchison, Elizabeth . Dimensions of human behavior: The changing life course. 4th Ed . Thousand oaks, CA: Sage publications, 2011. Print

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2023, November 24). Attachment Theory and Emotion Experience in Life. https://ivypanda.com/essays/attachment-theory/

"Attachment Theory and Emotion Experience in Life." IvyPanda , 24 Nov. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/attachment-theory/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Attachment Theory and Emotion Experience in Life'. 24 November.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Attachment Theory and Emotion Experience in Life." November 24, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/attachment-theory/.

1. IvyPanda . "Attachment Theory and Emotion Experience in Life." November 24, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/attachment-theory/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Attachment Theory and Emotion Experience in Life." November 24, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/attachment-theory/.

• Is There a Particular Attachment Style Linked With Conduct Disordered Children
• Political Parties: Texas Politics and Local Government
• The Impact of Mobile Devices on Cybersecurity
• Literacy Through iPads in Early Education
• Charles Rennie Mackintosh: Formative Years and Education
• Dimensions of Human Behavior
• Three Mobile Company Review
• American Revolution in Historical Misrepresentation
• Telstra Corporation: Situation Analysis
• The Lottery Literary Analysis – Summary & Analytical Essay
• Development Theories in Child Development
• The Theory of Human Change and Growth
• Compare and Contrast Child Developmental Theories
• Self Efficacy, Stress & Coping, and Headspace Program
• Definition and Theories of Environmental Psychology

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

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

• 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.

Bartholomew, K., and Horowitz, L. M. (1991). Attachment styles among young adults: a test of a four-category model. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 61, 226–244. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.61.2.226

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Bifulco, A. (2002). Attachment style measurement: a clinical and epidemiological perspective. Attach. Hum. Dev. 4, 180–188. doi: 10.1080/14616730210157501

PubMed Abstract | Full Text | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Bifulco, A., Figueiredo, B., Guedeney, N., Gorman, L. L., Hayes, S., Muzik, M.,et al. (2004). Maternal attachment style and depression associated with childbirth: preliminary results from a European and US cross-cultural study. Br. J. Psychiatry Suppl. 184, 31–37. doi: 10.1192/03-335

Bifulco, A., Moran, P. M., Ball, C., and Bernazzani, O. (2002). Adult attachment style. I: its relationship to clinical depression. Soc. Psychiatry Psychiatr. Epidemiol. 37, 50–59. doi: 10.1007/s127-002-8215-0

Bifulco, A., and Thomas, G. (2013). Understanding Adult Attachment in Family Relationships: Research, Assessment, and Intervention . Abingdon: Routledge.

Google Scholar

Bolger, N., and Laurenceau, J. P. (2013). Intensive Longitudinal Methods: An Introduction to Diary and Experience Sampling Research . New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Bowlby, J. (1973). Separation: Anxiety and Anger . Attachment and Loss, Vol. 2. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Bowlby, J. (1980). Loss: Sadness and Depression. Attachment and Loss, Vol. 3. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Bowlby, J. (1982). Attachment and Loss, Vol. 1. Attachment , 2nd Edn. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Brennan, K. A., Clark, C. L., and Shaver, P. R. (1998). “Self-report measurement of adult attachment: an integrative overview,” in Attachment Theory and Close Relationships, eds J. A. Simpson and W. S. Rholes (New York, NY: Guilford Press), 46–76.

PubMed Abstract | Full Text | Google Scholar

Campbell, L., and Marshall, T. (2011). Anxious attachment and relationship processes: an interactionist perspective. J. Pers. 79, 1219–1250. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.2011.00723.x

Cassidy, J., and Kobak, R. R. (1988). “Avoidance and its relationship with other defensive processes,” in Clinical Implications of Attachment , eds J. Belsky and T. Nezworski (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum), 300–323.

Cohen, J., Cohen, P., West, S. G., and Aiken, L. S. (2003). Applied Multiple Regression/Correlation Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences, 3rd Edn. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Collins, N. L., Guichard, A. C., Ford, M. B., and Feeney, B. C. (2004). “Working models of attachment: new developments and emerging themes,” in Adult Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Implications, eds W. S. Rholes and J. A. Simpson (New York, NY: Guilford Press), 196–239.

Conde, A., Figueiredo, B., and Bifulco, A. (2011). Attachment style and psychological adjustment in couples. Attach. Hum. Dev. 13, 271–291. doi: 10.1080/14616734.2011.562417

Conner, T. S., Tennen, H., Fleeson, W., and Barrett, L. F. (2009). Experience sampling methods: a modern idiographic approach to personality research. Soc. Personal. Psychol. Compass 3, 292–313. doi: 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2009.00170.x

Delespaul, P. (1995). Assessing Schizophrenia in Daily Life: The Experience Sampling Method . Maastricht: Universitaire Pers Maastricht.

de Vries, M. (1992). The Experience of Psychopathology: Investigating Mental Disorders in their Natural Settings . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ein-Dor, T., Mikulincer, M., and Shaver, P. R. (2011). Attachment insecurities and the processing of threat-related information: studying the schemas involved in insecure people’s coping strategies. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 101, 78–93. doi: 10.1037/a0022503

Enders, C. K., and Tofighi, D. (2007). Centering predictor variables in cross-sectional multilevel models: a new look at an old issue. Psychol. Methods 12, 121–138. doi: 10.1037/1082-989X.12.2.121

Fraley, R. C., Niedenthal, P. M., Marks, M., Brumbaugh, C., and Vicary, A. (2006). Adult attachment and the perception of emotional expressions: probing the hyperactivating strategies underlying anxious attachment. J. Pers. 74, 1163–1190. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.2006.00406.x

Fraley, R. C., and Shaver, P. R. (1997). Adult attachment and the suppression of unwanted thoughts. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 73, 1080–1091. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.73.5.1080

Gjerde, P. F., Onishi, M., and Carlson, K. S. (2004). Personality characteristics associated with romantic attachment: a comparison of interview and self-report methodologies. Pers. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 30, 1402–1415. doi: 10.1177/0146167204264291

Griffin, D., and Bartholomew, K. (1994). Models of the self and other: fundamental dimensions underlying measures of adult attachment. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 67, 430–445. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.67.3.430

Hektner, J. M., Schmidt, J. A., and Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2007). Experience Sampling Method: Measuring the Quality of Everyday Llife . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Kafetsios, K., and Nezlek, J. B. (2002). Attachment styles in everyday social interaction. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 32, 719–735. doi: 10.1002/ejsp.130

Kobak, R. R., and Sceery, A. (1988). Attachment in late adolescence: working models, affect regulation, and representations of self and others. Child Dev. 59, 135–146. doi: 10.2307/1130395

Main, M. (1990). Cross-cultural studies of attachment organization: recent studies, changing methodologies, and the concept of conditional strategies. Hum. Dev. 33, 48–61. doi: 10.1159/000276502

Mikulincer, M., and Orbach, I. (1995). Attachment styles and repressive defensiveness: the accessibility and architecture of affective memories. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 68, 917–925. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.68.5.917

Mikulincer, M., and Shaver, P. R. (2003). The attachment behavioral system in adulthood: activation, psychodynamics, and interpersonal processes. Adv. Exp. Soc. Psychol. 35, 53–152. doi: 10.1016/S0065-2601(03)01002-5

Mikulincer, M., and Shaver, P. R. (2007). Attachment in Adulthood: Structure, Dynamics, and Change . New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Mikulincer, M., and Shaver, P. R. (2008). “Adult attachment and affect regulation,” in Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications, 2nd Edn, eds J. Cassidy and P. R. Shaver (New York, NY: Guilford Press), 503–531.

Moore, S. R., Fu, Y., and Depue, R. A. (2014). Social traits modulate attention to affiliative cues. Front. Psychol. 5:649. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00649

Muthén, L. K., and Muthén, B. O. (1998–2010). Mplus user’s guide , 6th Edn. Los Angeles , CA: Muthén & Muthén.

Nezlek, J. B. (2001). Multilevel random coefficient analyses of event- and interval-contingent data in social and personality psychology research. Pers. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 27, 771–785. doi: 10.1177/0146167201277001

Oskis, A., Clow, A., Hucklebridge, F., Bifulco, A., Jacobs, C., and Loveday, C. (2013). Understanding alexithymia in female adolescents: the role of attachment style. Pers. Individ. Differ. 54, 97–102. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2012.08.023

Pietromonaco, P. R., and Barrett, L. F. (1997). Working models of attachment and daily social interactions. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 73, 1409–1423. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.73.6.1409

Pietromonaco, P. R., and Barrett, L. F. (2006). What can you do for me? Attachment style and motives underlying esteem for partners. J. Res. Pers. 40, 313–338. doi: 10.1016/j.jrp.2005.01.003

Reis, H. T., and Wheeler, L. (1991). Studying social interaction with the Rochester Interaction Record. Adv. Exp. Soc. Psychol. 24, 269–318. doi: 10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60332-9

Schore, A. (1994). Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Sibley, C. G., and Liu, J. H. (2006). Working models of romantic attachment and the subjective quality of social interactions across relational contexts. Pers. Relatsh. 13, 243–259. doi: 10.1111/j.1475-6811.2006.00116.x

Siegel, D. (2012). The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are , 2nd Edn. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Simpson, J. A., and Winterheld, H. A. (2012). “Person-by-situation perspectives on close relationships,” in The Oxford Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology, eds K. Deaux and M. Snyder (New York, NY: Oxford University Press), 493–516.

Solomon, M., and Tatkin, S. (2011). Love and War in Intimate Relationships: Connection, Disconnection, and Mutual Regulation in Couple Therapy. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.

Tidwell, M. C. O., Reis, H. T., and Shaver, P. R. (1996). Attachment, attractiveness, and social interaction: a diary study. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 71, 729–745. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.71.4.729

Torquati, J. C., and Raffaelli, M. (2004). Daily experiences of emotions and social contexts of securely and insecurely attached young adults. J. Adolesc. Res. 19, 740–758. doi: 10.1177/0743558403260023

van IJzendoorn, M. H., and Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J. (2010). Invariance of adult attachment across gender, age, culture, and socioeconomic status? J. Soc. Pers. Relat. 27, 200–208. doi: 10.1177/0265407509360908

van IJzendoorn, M. H., and Sagi-Schwartz, A. (2008). “Cross-cultural patterns of attachment: universal and contextual dimensions,” in Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications, 2nd Edn, eds J. Cassidy and P. R. Shaver (New York, NY: Guilford Press), 880–905.

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.

The relationships between attachment styles, reflective functioning, and emotion regulation in mothers of children diagnosed with ADHD

• Published: 01 September 2022
• Volume 42 , pages 25706–25716, ( 2023 )

Cite this article

• Ugo Pace   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0168-8153 1 ,
• Giulio D’Urso 1 ,
• Caterina Buzzai 1 ,
• Alessia Passanisi 1 &
• Carla Zappulla 2  

671 Accesses

Explore all metrics

In the present study, we explored the relationships between attachment styles, reflective functioning, and dimensions of emotion regulation in mothers of children diagnosed with combined type of ADHD. Participants were 336 mothers, 168 with children diagnosed with ADHD and 168 with children without any diagnosis. Preliminary results showed that mothers of children with ADHD had slightly lower levels of reflective functioning and cognitive reappraisal than mothers of children without ADHD did. Moreover, mothers of children with ADHD reported lower levels of secure attachment and a slightly higher levels of dismissing and anxious attachment than mothers of children without ADHD did. Focusing on the group of mothers of children with ADHD, the results showed that anxious and dismissing attachments were negatively associated with reflective functioning and that cognitive reappraisal partially mediated the relationship between the two attachment styles (anxious and dismissing) and reflective functioning. Theoretical and practical implications are provided.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price includes VAT (Russian Federation)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Rent this article via DeepDyve

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Associations of Parenting Styles with Self-Esteem in Children and Adolescents: A Meta-Analysis

The Relation Between Attachment and Depression in Children and Adolescents: A Multilevel Meta-Analysis

Relation of parenting child abuse based on attachment styles, parenting styles, and parental addictions

Data availability.

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Ainsworth, M. S. (1979). Infant–mother attachment. American Psychologist, 34 , 932–937. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.34.10.932

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Alonso-Alberca, N., Vergara, A. I., Zappulla, C., Di Maggio, R., Pace, U., & Sheffler, K. (2020). Cross-cultural validity of the Emotion Matching Task. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 29 , 1159–1172. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-019-01634-y

Article   Google Scholar  

American Psychiatric Association. (2000). DSM-IV-TR. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder, Fourth Edition, Text Revision . American Psychiatric Association. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470479216.corpsy0271

Badoud, D., Prada, P., Nicastro, R., Germond, C., Luyten, P., Perroud, N., & Debbané, M. (2018). Attachment and reflective functioning in women with borderline personality disorder. Journal of Personality Disorders, 32 , 17–30. https://doi.org/10.1521/pedi_2017_31_283

Baldoni F. (2008). Alle origini del trauma: confusione delle lingue e fallimento della funzione riflessiva [At the origins of trauma: Confusion of languages and failure of the reflective function]. In G. Crocetti & A. Zarri (Eds.), Gli dei della notte sulle sorgenti della vita. Il trauma precoce dalla coppia madre al bambino [The gods of the night on the springs of life. Early trauma from the mother couple to the child] (pp. 137–159). Pendragon.

Balzarotti, S., Gross, O. P., & John, J. J. (2010). An Italian adaptation of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire. European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 26 , 61–67. https://doi.org/10.1027/1015-5759/a000009

Bartholomew, K., & Horowitz, L. M. (1991). Attachment styles among young adults: A test of a four-category model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61 , 226–244. https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.61.2.226

Binder, A. S., Brown, H. R., & Harvey, E. A. (2020). Executive function and trajectories of emotion dysregulation in children with parent-reported behavior problems. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 48 , 481–493. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-019-00616-4

Borelli, J. L., St John, H. K., Cho, E., & Suchman, N. E. (2016). Reflective functioning in parents of school-aged children. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 86 , 24–36. https://doi.org/10.1037/ort0000141

Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment. Attachment and loss: Vol. 1 . Loss . Basic Books.

Breinholst, S., Esbjørn, H., & Steele, H. (2018). Attachment and reflective functioning in anxious and non-anxious children: A case-controlled study. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 27 , 2622–2631. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-018-1106-4

Cassidy, J. (1994). Emotion regulation: Influences of attachment relationships. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 59 , 228–249. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5834.1994.tb01287.x

Cutuli, D. (2014). Cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression strategies role in the emotion regulation: An overview on their modulatory effects and neural correlates. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, 8 , 1–6. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnsys.2014.00175

Demontis, D., Walters, R. K., Martin, J., Mattheisen, M., Als, T. D., Agerbo, E., Baldursson, G., Belliveau, R., Bybjerg-Grauholm, J., Baekvad-Hansen, M., et al. (2019). Discovery of the first genome-wide significant risk loci for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Nature Genetics, 51, 63–75. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-018-0269-7

Di Maggio, R., Zappulla, C., & Pace, U. (2016). The relationship between emotion regulation, emotion knowledge and adjustment in preschoolers: A mediation model. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 25 , 2626–2635. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-016-0409-6

Diamond, L. M., & Aspinwall, L. G. (2003). Emotion regulation across the life span: An integrative perspective emphasizing self-regulation, positive affect, and dyadic processes. Motivation and Emotion, 27 , 125–156. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1024521920068

D’Urso, G., & Pace, U. (2019). Homophobic bullying among adolescents: The role of insecure-dismissing attachment and peer support. Journal of LGBT Youth, 16 , 173–191. https://doi.org/10.1080/19361653.2018.1552225

Faraone, S. V., Banaschewski, T., Coghill, D., Zheng, Y., Biederman, J., Bellgrove, M. A., Newcorn, J. H., Gignac, M., Al Saud, N. M., Manor, I., et al. (2021). The World Federation of ADHD International Consensus Statement: 208 evidence-based conclusions about the disorder. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 128 , 789–818. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2021.01.022

Fonagy, P. (2001). Attachment theory and psychoanalysis . Other Press. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429472060

Book   Google Scholar  

Fonagy, P., & Bateman, A. W. (2016). Adversity, attachment, and mentalizing. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 64 , 59–66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comppsych.2015.11.006

Fonagy, P., Luyten, P., Moulton-Perkins, A., Lee, Y. W., Warren, F., Howard, S., Ghinai, R., Fearon, P., & Lowyck, B. (2016). Development and validation of a self-report measure of mentalizing: The reflective functioning questionnaire. PLoS One, 11 , e0158678. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0158678

Fonagy, P., Steele, H., Moran, G. S., Steele, M., & Higgitt, A. (1991). The capacity for understanding mental states: The reflective self in parent and child and its significance for security of attachment. Infant Mental Health Journal, 12 , 200–218. https://doi.org/10.1002/1097-0355(199123)

Fonagy, P., & Target, M. (1997). Attachment and reflective function: Their role in self-organization. Development and Psychopathology, 9 , 679–700. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579497001399

Gartstein, M. A., & Skinner, M. K. (2018). Prenatal influences on temperament development: The role of environmental epigenetics. Developmental Psychopathology, 30 , 1269–1303. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579417001730

Gershy, N., & Gray, S. A. (2018). Parental emotion regulation and mentalization in families of children with ADHD. Journal of Attention Disorders, 24 , 2084–2099. https://doi.org/10.1177/1087054718762486

Goldberg, S., Muir, R., & Kerr, J. (2013). Attachment theory: Social, developmental, and clinical perspectives . Routledge.

Grienenberger, J. F., Kelly, K., & Slade, A. (2005). Maternal reflective functioning, mother-infant affective communication, and infant attachment: Exploring the link between mental states and observed caregiving behavior in the intergenerational transmission of attachment. Attachment and Human Development, 7 , 299–311. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616730500245963

Gross, J. J. (2013). Emotion regulation: Taking stock and moving forward. Emotion, 13 , 359–365. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0032135

Gross, J. J. (2015). Emotion regulation: Current status and future prospects. Psychological Inquiry, 26 , 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0032135

Gross, J. J., & John, O. P. (1995). Facets of emotional expressivity: Three self-report factors and their correlates. Personality and Individual Differences, 19 , 555–568. https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-8869(95)00055-B

Gross, J. J., & John, O. P. (2003). Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85 , 348–362. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.2.348

Gross, J. J., Sheppes, G., & Urry, H. L. (2011). Emotion generation and emotion regulation: A distinction we should make (carefully). Cognition and Emotion, 25 , 765–781. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2011.555753

Groves, N. B., Kofler, M. J., Wells, E. L., Day, T. N., & Chan, E. S. M. (2020). An examination of relations among working memory, ADHD symptoms, and emotion regulation. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 48, 525–537. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-019-00612-8

Günter, M. (2014). Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): An affect-processing and thought disorder? The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 95 , 43–66. https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-8315.12081

Hinshaw, S. P. (2018). Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): Controversy, developmental mechanisms, and multiple levels of analysis. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology , 14 , 291–316. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-050817-084917 .

Hopwood, C. J. (2007). Moderation and mediation in structural equation modeling: Applications for early intervention research. Journal of Early Intervention, 29 , 262–272. https://doi.org/10.1177/105381510702900305

Huth-Bocks, A. C., Muzik, M., Beeghly, M., Earls, L., & Stacks, A. M. (2014). Secure base scripts are associated with maternal parenting behavior across contexts and reflective functioning among trauma-exposed mothers. Attachment and Human Development, 16 , 535–556. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616734.2014.967787

Keown, L. J. (2012). Predictors of boys’ ADHD symptoms from early to middle childhood: The role of father–child and mother–child interactions. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 40 , 569–581. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-011-9586-3

Kindsvatter, A., & Desmond, K. J. (2013). Addressing parent-child conflict: Attachment-based interventions with parents. Journal of Counseling & Development, 91 , 105–112. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1556-6676.2013.00078.x

Laible, D. (2004). Mother-child discourse in two contexts: Links with child temperament, attachment security, and socioemotional competence. Developmental Psychology, 40 , 979–992. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.40.6.979

Laible, D. J., & Thompson, R. A. (2000). Mother-child discourse, attachment security, shared positive affect, and early conscience development. Child Development, 71 , 1424–1440. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00237

Levy, K. N., Meehan, K. B., Kelly, K. M., Reynoso, J. S., Weber, M., Clarkin, J. F., & Kernberg, O. F. (2006). Change in attachment patterns and reflective function in a randomized control trial of transference-focused psychotherapy for borderline personality disorder. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 74 , 1027–1040. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.74.6.1027

Macklem, G. L. (2008). Parenting and emotion regulation. In G. L. Macklem (Ed.), Practitioner’s guide to emotion regulation in school-aged children (pp. 49–62). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-73851-2_5

Morel, K., & Papouchis, N. (2015). The role of attachment and reflective functioning in emotion regulation. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 63 , NP15-NP20. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003065115602447

Normand, S., Soucisse, M. M., Melançon, M. P. V., Schneider, B. H., Lee, M. D., & Maisonneuve, M. F. (2019). Observed free-play patterns of children with ADHD and their real-life friends. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 47 , 259–271. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-018-0437-3

Núñez-Jaramillo, L., Herrera-Solís, A., & Herrera-Morales, W. V. (2021). ADHD: Reviewing the causes and evaluating solutions. Journal of Personalized Medicine, 11 , 166. https://doi.org/10.3390/jpm11030166

Article   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Pace, U., Aiello, F., & Zappulla, C. (2019a). Childhood obesity: The relationship between negative emotionality, emotion regulation, and parenting styles. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 28 , 2272–2279. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-019-01443-3

Pace, U., D’Urso, G., & Zappulla, C. (2019b). Internalizing problems as a mediator in the relationship between low effortful control and internet abuse in adolescence: A three-wave longitudinal study. Computer in Human Behavior, 92 , 47–54. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.10.030

Pace, U., D’Urso, G., & Zappulla, C. (2018a). Adolescent effortful control as moderator of father's psychological control in externalizing problems: A longitudinal study. The Journal of Psychology, 152 , 164–177. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223980.2017.1419160

Pace, U., D’Urso, G., & Zappulla, C. (2018b). Negative eating attitudes and behaviors among adolescents: The role of parental control and perceived peer support. Appetite, 121 , 77–82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2017.11.001

Pace, U., Madonia, C., Passanisi, A., Iacolino, C., & Di Maggio, R. (2015). Is sensation seeking linked only to personality traits? The role of quality of attachment in the development of sensation seeking among Italian adolescents: A longitudinal perspective. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 6 , 260–267. https://doi.org/10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n2s1p260

Pace, U., & Zappulla, C. (2011). Problem behaviors in adolescence: The opposite role played by insecure attachment and commitment strength. Journal of Child and Family Studies., 20 , 854–862. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-011-9453-4

Pace, U., Zappulla, C., & Di Maggio, R. (2016). The mediating role of perceived peer support in the relation between quality of attachment and internalizing problems in adolescence: A longitudinal perspective. Attachment and Human Development, 18 , 508–524. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616734.2016.1198919

Passanisi, A., & Pace, U. (2017). The unique and common contributions of impulsivity and decision-making strategies among young adult Italian regular gamblers. Personality and Individual Differences, 105 , 24–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.PAID.2016.09.029

Perroud, N., Zewdie, S., Stenz, L., Adouan, W., Bavamian, S., Prada, P., et al. (2016). Methylation of serotonin receptor 3A in ADHD, borderline personality, and bipolar disorders: Link with severity of the disorders and childhood maltreatment. Depression and Anxiety, 33 , 45–55.

Rutter, M. (1979). Maternal deprivation, 1972–1978: New findings, new concepts, new approaches. Child Development, 50 , 283–305. https://doi.org/10.2307/1129404

Silk, T., Dipnall, L., Wong, Y. T., & Craig, J. M. (2022). Epigenetics and ADHD. In Stanford, S. C. and Sciberras, E. (Eds) New discoveries in the behavioral neuroscience of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Current topics in behavioral neurosciences  (vol. 57). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/7854_2022_339

Slade, A. (2005). Parental reflective functioning: An introduction. Attachment and Human Development, 7 , 269–281. https://doi.org/10.2307/1129404

Slade, A., Grienenberger, J., Bernbach, E., Levy, D., & Locker, A. (2005). Maternal reflective functioning, attachment, and the transmission gap: A preliminary study. Attachment & Human Devlopment, 7 , 283–298. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616730500245880

Suchman, N. E., Ordway, M. R., de Las Heras, L., & McMahon, T. J. (2016). Mothering from the Inside Out: Results of a pilot study testing a mentalization based therapy for mothers enrolled in mental health services. Attachment and Human Development, 18 , 596–617. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616734.2016.1226371

Tamir, M. (2009). What do people want to feel and why? Pleasure and utility in emotion regulation. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18 , 101–105. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2009.01617.x

Thorell, L. B., Rydell, A. M., & Bohlin, G. (2012). Parent-child attachment and executive functioning in relation to ADHD symptoms in middle childhood. Attachment & Human Development, 14 , 517–532. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616734.2012.706396

Udagawa, J., & Hino, K. (2016). Impact of maternal stress in pregnancy on brain function of the offspring. Japanese Journal of Hygiene, 71, 188–194. https://doi.org/10.1265/jjh.71.188

Yusuf Ali, A., Inyang, B., Koshy, F. S., George, K., Poudel P., Chalasani, R., Goonathilake, M. R., Waqar, S., George, S., Jean-Baptiste, W., & Mohammed, L. (2022). Elements that influence the development of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in Children. Cureus 14 (8), e27835 . https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.27835

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

University of Enna Kore, Enna, Italy

Ugo Pace, Giulio D’Urso, Caterina Buzzai & Alessia Passanisi

University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy

Carla Zappulla

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ugo Pace .

Ethics declarations

Ethical approval.

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The research was approved by the ethics committee of Kore University of Enna. 

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. 

Disclosure statement

There is no potential conflict between authors and other institutions.

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Pace, U., D’Urso, G., Buzzai, C. et al. The relationships between attachment styles, reflective functioning, and emotion regulation in mothers of children diagnosed with ADHD. Curr Psychol 42 , 25706–25716 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03706-7

Download citation

Accepted : 24 August 2022

Published : 01 September 2022

Issue Date : October 2023

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03706-7

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Reflective functioning
• Emotion regulation
• Path analysis
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

Reviewed by Psychology Today Staff

Attachment is the emotional bond that forms between infant and caregiver , and it is how the helpless infant gets primary needs met. It then becomes an engine of subsequent social, emotional, and cognitive development. An infant's early social experience stimulates the growth of the brain and can influence the formation of stable relationships with others.

Attachment provides the infant's first coping system; it sets up a mental representation of the caregiver in an infant's mind, which can be summoned as a comforting mental presence in difficult moments. Attachment allows an infant to separate from the caregiver without distress and explore the world around her.

Neuroscientists believe that attachment is such a primal need that there are networks of neurons in the brain dedicated to setting it in motion in the first place and a hormone — oxytocin —that fosters the process.

Attachment styles are not immutable, they can change substantially over time , research suggests, and may differ from relationship to relationship. Enduring a terrible relationship might lead to a less secure attachment orientation; a history of supportive relationships may lead to increased security. Therapy —providing a safe connection and an opportunity to learn relational skills— may also be helpful .

• Early Attachment
• Attachment Styles

Attachment develops through everyday interactions as a caregiver attends to an infant's needs. The bond between infant and caregiver is usually so well established before the end of the first year of life that it is possible to test the nature and quality of the bond at that time.

As a result of their work with many child-caregiver pairs, researchers have described several basic patterns of attachment. In their studies, researchers briefly separate young children from their caregiver and observe their behavior before and after they are reunited with the caregiver.

• Children with a secure attachment may be distressed upon separation but warmly welcome the caregiver back through eye contact and hug-seeking.
• Anxious-resistant attachment describes a child who is frightened by separation and continues to display anxious behavior once the caregiver returns.
• Avoidant attachment denotes a child who reacts fairly calmly to a parent’s separation and does not embrace their return.
• Disorganized attachment is manifest in odd or ambivalent behavior toward a caregiver upon return—approaching then turning away from or even hitting the caregiver—and may be the result of childhood trauma .

A majority of children tend to show “secure” attachment behavior in studies, while others seem “insecure,” showing one of the other patterns.

Secure attachment in children has been theorized to result from sensitive, responsive caregiving , and insecurity from its lack. While there is evidence that parenting can influence attachment security , it’s also clear that other factors—including genetics—play a formative role .

British psychoanalyst John Bowlby proposed that children’s attachment behaviors (such as showing distress at a parent’s absence) are part of an evolved behavioral system that helps ensure they are cared for. Psychologist Mary Ainsworth later began to experimentally study variations in how children respond to separation from parents. Others have expanded attachment theory to adult relationships .

Abuse and trauma in childhood may hinder the development of secure attachment and may be predictive of attachment insecurity later in life . In cases of severe neglect or mistreatment, a child may develop reactive attachment disorder (RAD) , characterized by difficulty forming a bond with caregivers.

Attachment security and behaviors have been studied in adult relationships, and attachment-related patterns that differ between individuals are commonly called "attachment styles." There seems to be an association between a person’s attachment characteristics early in life and in adulthood, but the correlations are far from perfect.

Many adults feel secure in their relationships and comfortable depending on others (echoing “secure” attachment in children). Others tend to feel anxious about their connection with close others—or prefer to avoid getting close to them in the first place. Studies of persons with borderline personality disorder , characterized by a longing for intimacy and a hypersensitivity to rejection, have shown a high prevalence and severity of insecure attachment.

Attachment styles in adulthood have labels similar to those used to describe attachment patterns in children:

• Anxious-preoccupied (high anxiety , low avoidance)
• Dismissing-avoidant (low anxiety, high avoidance)
• Fearful-avoidant (high anxiety, high avoidance)

However, attachment styles may be better thought of as dimensional, where a person rates as relatively high, low, or somewhere in the middle in their levels of attachment-related anxiety and attachment-related avoidance. Also, a person may not exhibit the same kind of attachment pattern in every close relationship.

A person may have high attachment anxiety if she worries a lot about being abandoned or uncared for. This is  measurable by one’s agreement with statements such as “I worry about being alone” and “I often worry that romantic partners don’t really love me." Someone high in attachment avoidance likely worries about other people getting “too close.”

People with a secure attachment style tend to fare better on outcomes such as relationship stability and sexual satisfaction , research suggests, and may be less likely to engage in disruptive acts such as partner surveillance or harmful sexual behavior .

Minimize children's stress by considering their age, the relationship and level of conflict between the parents, and the distance between the two homes.

Love bombing can set you up to overlook red flags and fall for someone creating a false illusion. Here are 8 tips for protecting yourself.

Seven telltale signs can reveal whether a new prospect's heart is stuck in the past or ready to move forward.

Here’s a way to understand how attachment and bonding in infancy shape one’s sense of self, degree of emotional security, and capacity for independent thinking.

Tough questions about trust, responsibility, and ethics in REBT.

Ghosting has become common in the modern era of dating. If you are having difficulty moving on after being ghosted, consider these essential tips.

If you are uncomfortable with physical affection, learning to let down your guard and open your heart can be a relationship and life changer.

Amidst the "Gray Divorce Revolution," two adult sisters, grappling with their parents' split that challenges the family fabric they once knew, echo the silent struggle of millions.

Not all neglect is the same. The reasons you were neglected as a child and the kind of neglect you experienced play out in specific ways in your adult life and inform your healing.

When your alienated child accuses you of something you didn't do, you might think that the obvious response is to correct them. But that may backfire—focus on this instead.

• Find a Therapist
• Find a Treatment Center
• Find a Psychiatrist
• Find a Support Group
• Find Online Therapy
• United States
• Brooklyn, NY
• Chicago, IL
• Houston, TX
• Los Angeles, CA
• New York, NY
• Portland, OR
• San Diego, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• Seattle, WA
• Washington, DC
• Asperger's
• Bipolar Disorder
• Chronic Pain
• Eating Disorders
• Passive Aggression
• Personality
• Goal Setting
• Positive Psychology
• Stopping Smoking
• Low Sexual Desire
• Relationships
• Child Development
• Therapy Center NEW
• Diagnosis Dictionary
• Types of Therapy

At any moment, someone’s aggravating behavior or our own bad luck can set us off on an emotional spiral that threatens to derail our entire day. Here’s how we can face our triggers with less reactivity so that we can get on with our lives.

• Emotional Intelligence
• Gaslighting
• Affective Forecasting
• Neuroscience

Attachment Styles in Therapy: 6 Worksheets & Handouts

Early exposure to absent, neglectful, or emotionally distant parents can shape what we expect from future bonds.

According to attachment theory, the patterns of attachment we form when we are young impact our later relationships with our partners, friends, and families (Gibson, 2020).

Without at least one loving, secure, and nurturing relationship, a child’s development can be disrupted, with the potential for long-lasting consequences (Cassidy et al., 2013).

This article introduces attachment theory before exploring attachment styles and the potential to change them.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Positive Relationships Exercises for free . These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients build healthy, life-enriching relationships.

This Article Contains:

Attachment theory in psychology: 4 types & characteristics, how to approach attachment styles in therapy, discovering attachment styles: 10 interview questions & questionnaires, can you change them 6 helpful worksheets & handouts, positivepsychology.com’s relevant resources, a take-home message.

Early in the lives of the mentally well, young children develop ‘secure base scripts’ – the beginnings of early attachment patterns. For example, “When I am hurting, I go to my mother for comfort” (Cassidy et al., 2013, p. 1417).

Over time, such scripts become ‘stories,’ providing a dependable base from which to explore and a safe place to return (Cassidy et al., 2013).

When children have negligent parents or caregivers – perhaps they are not present or emotionally unavailable – they can form unhelpful attachment patterns. For example, early self-sufficiency may leave individuals unable to develop close relationships and lonely in later life.

Developed by John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth in the 1960s, attachment theory  recognizes the importance of the child’s dependence on their caregiver (Bowlby, 1988). Such an early relationship can lead to four different attachment styles with corresponding underlying characteristics (Cassidy et al., 2013; Gibson, 2020; The Attachment Project, 2020).

Dismissive-avoidant (sometimes referred to as ‘avoidant’)

Someone who has adopted a dismissive-avoidant style perpetuates a sense of defectiveness and uncertainty in their relationships.

They typically show the following characteristics:

• Appear withdrawn
• Emotionally distant in relationships
• Unlikely to connect at an intimate level
• Highly independent
• Find close involvement with their partners difficult
• Feel overwhelmed when heavily relied upon

As a result, the individual may retreat from the relationship physically and emotionally (Gibson, 2020).

Fearful-avoidant (sometimes referred to as ‘disorganized’)

An individual who experienced an untrusting relationship with caregivers (they may have been addicts or emotionally unwell) during childhood may be fearful-avoidant across all adult relationships (romantic and otherwise).

They typically:

• Feel unworthy
• Are ambivalent in relationships
• Regularly shift between being distant and vulnerable
• Over-analyze micro expressions, such as body language, to look for betrayal
• Fail to trust naturally
• Feel betrayal is always just around the corner

Having, most likely, experienced some form of abuse early in their lives, the individual craves love but expects betrayal, resulting in unpredictable behavior.

Anxious attachment

Anxious attachment also results from inconsistency during childhood, often the result of absenteeism from caregivers.

• Are high sacrificing people-pleasers
• Fear rejection
• Have a heightened fear of being abandoned
• Overcompensate in adult relationships
• Sacrifice their own needs to maintain relationships

The individual most likely lacked consistent and predictable caregiving as a child, leaving them expecting to be rejected.

Secure attachment

Individuals with a secure attachment style often have experienced available and supportive parents.

• Feel secure in relationships
• Are supportive, open, and available in their relationships
• Have the potential to shift individuals in other attachment styles to a more secure one

Those with a secure attachment style “were taught you can be safe while being vulnerable and that their needs were worthy of being met” (Gibson, 2020, p. 15).

Attachment-based psychotherapy (not to be confused with Attachment Therapy , which has questionable efficacy and morality) is based on a ttachment theory as described by its originator John Bowlby (1988) and typically includes the therapist (Brisch, 2012):

• Allowing the client to speak via their attachment system
• Making themselves emotionally available and a reliable and secure base
• Taking into account the client’s attachment styles when handling closeness and interactions
• Acting as a model for dealing with separation
• Avoiding being too close and being perceived as a threat

The client is encouraged to:

• Become more aware of the attachment strategies they use in their relationships
• Consider the attachment style they adopt in therapy
• Compare current perceptions and feelings with those experienced in childhood
• Understand that their distorted perception of themselves (and others) may be outdated and unhelpful
• Verbalize their separation anxieties concerned with being without the therapist

It is crucial to recognize that “early childhood interactions between attachment figures and child carry over to therapy” (Brisch, 2012, p. 103).

Download 3 Free Positive Relationships Exercises (PDF)

These detailed, science-based exercises will equip you or your clients to build healthy, life-enriching relationships.

Download 3 Positive Relationships Pack (PDF)

By filling out your name and email address below.

• Email Address *
• Your Expertise * Your expertise Therapy Coaching Education Counseling Business Healthcare Other
• Phone This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Plotka (2011, p. 4) describes the “Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) as a method of classifying a current state of mind with respect to attachment in adults.”

Adult Attachment Interview

The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) was initially created for research purposes but now forms a regular part of interpreting attachment styles in therapy (Brisch, 2012).

The series of questions is used to probe an adult’s early attachment memories and their current strategies for processing information and feelings.

The following 10 questions are an excerpt from an AAI protocol (modified from George et al., 1985: Brisch, 2012):

• To help me get oriented, could you give me an idea of who was in your immediate family and where you lived?
• Starting with your earliest memories, can you describe your relationship with your parents or caregivers?
• What phrases or adjectives come to mind?
• Which parent did you feel closest to? And why do you think that was?
• When you were upset as a child, what would you do? Who would you go to?
• Can you describe your first memory of separation from your parents?
• Did you ever feel rejected as a child?
• Did your parents ever threaten you?
• How do you think your early experiences may have affected you in adulthood?
• Why do you think your parents behaved as they did?

The above questions are not complete but provide a sample of the AAI .

Attachment Style Interview

Another approach, known as the Attachment Style Interview (ASI), takes a social psychological approach to assess attachment and the individual’s current attachment style.

The ASI is a semi-structured interview, typically taking 90 minutes to administer and explore, without predefined questions, but instead openly exploring (Bifulco et al., 2008; Centre for Abuse and Trauma Studies, n.d.):

• Current ongoing support from present partner
• Current ongoing support from close confidants
• Current ability to form and maintain relationships
• Current generalized attachment attitudes
• Overall attachment style

The ASI is particularly helpful in the adoption and fostering assessment processes.

“Attachment theory is concerned with safety and trust in intimate relationships.”

Chen, 2019, p. 19

Forming a better understanding of their attachment styles and behaviors can help individuals change them to ones that are more supportive and appropriate to well-balanced relationships.

The following worksheets are tools for improving attachment styles through awareness of childhood and adult relationship patterns.

Recognizing Relationship Burnout

Relationships can be exhausting, especially when one partner is dismissive, avoidant, fearful, or anxious (Chen, 2019).

Use the Recognizing Relationship Burnout worksheet to assess whether the relationship is heading for burnout.

Ask the client to rate behaviors that may apply to their relationship and provide an example for each one.

The client should review the answers and look for patterns that may result from either their own or their partner’s attachment styles. For example, are they overly needy, distant, or fearful their partner will leave?

Mapping Emotions

“Emotions have both a mental and a physical component” (Chen, 2019, p. 34). Recognizing them can be the path toward self-acceptance and self-compassion.

Use the Mapping Emotions worksheet to direct the client’s attention to their bodily experiences of emotion to reach a greater acceptance of feelings.

Ask the client to think of the last time they were angry with someone they cared about and how it felt physically.

• Where did you feel the emotion in your body (for example, shoulders, chest, stomach, etc.)?
• Think of a shape or color that best reflects that feeling (for example, a heavy red ball in the stomach).

Encourage the client, with their eyes closed, to think back to that time and the feelings they had with curiosity, acceptance, and self-compassion, then try to imagine the shape or object slowly dissolving, all color and weight leaving.

Recognizing Our Need for Safety and Security

Feeling safe and secure is important in life, particularly in relationships. “Security is about reassurance that connection and resources are and will remain available” and is crucial for relationship collaboration and intimacy (Chen, 2019, p. 43).

Use the Recognizing Our Need for Safety and Security worksheet to help the client better understand what they must have to feel safe in daily life or at a stressful time.

Ask the client to consider the following:

• What could you do to prevent yourself from getting stressed?
• What could your partner do to prevent you from getting stressed?
• What could you do to calm yourself down once you are stressed?
• What could your partner do to calm you down once you are stressed?
• What can you do to reassure yourself of the relationship connection you have?
• What things could your partner do to reassure you of the relationship connection you have?

Performing an Avoidance Stock Take

Avoidant strategies are most problematic when they stop you from being who you want or behaving in the way you would like (Chen, 2019).

Use the Performing an Avoidance Stock Take worksheet to help your client become more aware of the situations that cause them stress and lead to avoidant behavior.

Ask the client to answer the following questions concerning what they find stressful and the situations they avoid.

• What emotions are you experiencing when you are most stressed or likely to avoid a situation (for example, anger, fear, shame, guilt, hurt, or sadness, etc.)?
• What are you looking for or need when you are most stressed or likely to avoid a situation (for example, affection, warmth, love, intimacy, etc.)?
• What is happening when you are most stressed or likely to avoid a situation (for example, decision-making, losing autonomy, trying to be understood, etc.)?

Reviewing their answers should help the client recognize the feelings and behaviors they find difficult. Rather than avoid them, they can try to explore them with their partner while showing themselves more self-compassion.

Identifying Needs and Wants

While we may feel frustrated in a relationship about not getting our needs met, we must first begin by being transparent with ourselves about what these needs are.

Use the Identifying Needs and Wants worksheet to explore a situation or issue when you feel your needs have not been met.

• Describe a situation when you feel your needs were not met.
• Describe each of the needs.
• What should have happened to meet those needs?
• How would you have felt if this had happened?
• How could you share your needs more clearly with your partner?

Accepting Yourself as Being Perfectly Imperfect

Sometimes we need to be reminded to give ourselves a break. We are imperfect; we make mistakes and do or say the wrong things. We can work on getting better, but we will never be perfect.

Use the Accepting Yourself as Being Perfectly Imperfect worksheet with your client to think about when they expect perfection and how to be more kind to themselves.

Ask the client to answer the following questions:

• When in your relationship do you expect perfection from yourself?
• When in your relationship do you expect perfection from your partner?
• How do you feel when you fail to be perfect?
• How do you feel when your partner fails to be perfect?
• What do you do when you feel this way (for example, overeat, avoid your partner, shout, etc.)?
• What message might you give yourself to show more kindness and compassion to yourself and your partner?

Put on your attachment hat & change your romantic attachment style

We have many resources available for therapists to support couples hoping to address relationship issues and strengthen emotional bonds.

Why not download our free positive relationships pack and try out the powerful tools contained within? Some examples include:

• Identifying Our Expert Companions This exercise helps clients identify expert companions (people who take care of their emotional needs and offer support) among the variety of people they know and discover what they need from them.
• The Sound Relationship House Inspection Examine how well a relationship is performing through the lens of the relationship house metaphor to identify opportunities for nurturing.

Other free resources include:

• Anxious Attachment Patterns Use this exercise to identify and understand anxious attachment patterns in a relationship by digging deeper into an uncomfortable experience.
• Understanding the Values You Want in a Relationship This worksheet helps you better understand your values and what gives life meaning.

More extensive versions of the following tools are available with a subscription to the Positive Psychology Toolkit© , but they are described briefly below:

• The Mountain Climber Metaphor Successful client relationships require a strong therapeutic relationship between client and therapist. Self-determination theory suggests three key ingredients for any healthy relationship .

The Mountain Climber Metaphor is a tool for helping address client concerns and paving the way for a healthy alliance by fostering a sense of relatedness.

• Step one – Identify the people who matter most in your life.
• Step two – Select up to four relationships you value and explore the reasons why.
• Step three – Reflect on how much time you invest in these relationships.
• Step four – Find ways to invest more time in these relationships by initiating connection, showing appreciation, being present, and listening.

If you’re looking for more science-based ways to help others build healthy relationships, this collection contains 17 validated positive relationships tools for practitioners. Use them to help others form healthier, more nurturing, and life-enriching relationships.

17 Exercises for Positive, Fulfilling Relationships

Empower others with the skills to cultivate fulfilling, rewarding relationships and enhance their social wellbeing with these 17 Positive Relationships Exercises [PDF].

Created by experts. 100% Science-based.

Undoubtedly, our childhood experiences can influence our thinking, beliefs, and behavior much later in life.

Solid and secure relationships from caregivers can provide confidence in the bonds we form with our partners, family, and friends as adults. When caregivers are neglectful, absent, or even abusive, attachment styles can develop that predict subsequent relationship patterns.

Our past need not define our future. While attachment theory recognizes the importance of early relationships, it also promotes our capacity for change. None of us are fixed in how we relate to others, and our anxious, fearful, and avoidant behavior can be overcome.

For most of us, our aim is to develop and maintain relationships that are secure, open, supportive, and beneficial to both. Therapy can help clients identify existing unhealthy attachment styles and replace them with new and more helpful ones.

This article serves as a helpful starting point for therapists wishing to use knowledge of attachment styles to benefit their clients’ existing and future relationships and offers worksheets to begin that journey.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Positive Relationships Exercises for free .

• The Attachment Project. (2020, July 2). Attachment styles and their role in adult relationships . Retrieved March 9, 2022, from https://www.attachmentproject.com/blog/four-attachment-styles/
• Bifulco, A., Jacobs, C., Bunn, A., Thomas, G., & Irving, K. (2008). The attachment style interview (ASI): A support-based adult assessment tool for adoption and fostering practice. Adoption & Fostering , 32 (3), 33–45.
• Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Parent–child attachment and healthy human development . Basic Books.
• Brisch, K. H. (2012). Treating attachment disorders: From theory to therapy (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
• Cassidy, J., Jones, J. D., & Shaver, P. R. (2013). Contributions of attachment theory and research: A framework for future research, translation, and policy. Development and Psychopathology , 25 (4pt2), 1415–1434.
• Centre for Abuse and Trauma Studies. (n.d.). The Attachment Style Interview (ASI): A fact sheet for professionals in children’s services . Retrieved March 10, 2022, from https://lifespantraining.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/ASI_fact_sheet_for_court_use.pdf
• Chen, A. (2019). The attachment theory workbook: Powerful tools to promote understanding, increase stability & build lasting relationships . Althea Press.
• George, C., Kaplan, N., & Main, M. (1985). The Adult Attachment Interview . Unpublished manuscript, University of California at Berkeley.
• Gibson, T. (2020). Attachment theory: A guide to strengthening the relationships in your life . Rockridge Press.
• Plotka, R. (2011). Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). In S. Goldstein & J. A. Naglieri (Eds.),  Encyclopedia of child behavior and development (p. 4). Springer.

Share this article:

Article feedback

What our readers think.

It’s self-perpetuating until patterns are changed.

‘… and our anxious, fearful, and avoidant behavior can be overcome.’

No , it can’t. Not in practical terms. If youthful, yes. If not, no. Not when you’ve lived such a life for more than three score years, and have little functional life remaining.

Not very helpful. Seems to assume patient has ‘distorted perceptions’. I doubt that’s necessarily true. Patient’s perceptions – eg of social rejection – may be perfectly accurate.

Let us know your thoughts Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Related articles

Setting Boundaries: Quotes & Books for Healthy Relationships

Rather than being a “hot topic,” setting boundaries is more of a “boomerang topic” in that we keep coming back to it. This is partly [...]

14 Worksheets for Setting Healthy Boundaries

Setting healthy, unapologetic boundaries offers peace and freedom where life was previously overwhelming and chaotic. When combined with practicing assertiveness and self-discipline, boundary setting can [...]

Victim Mentality: 10 Ways to Help Clients Conquer Victimhood

Life isn’t always fair, and injustice is everywhere. However, some people see themselves as victims whenever they face setbacks or don’t get their own way. [...]

Read other articles by their category

• Body & Brain (50)
• Coaching & Application (57)
• Compassion (26)
• Counseling (51)
• Emotional Intelligence (24)
• Gratitude (18)
• Grief & Bereavement (21)
• Happiness & SWB (40)
• Meaning & Values (26)
• Meditation (20)
• Mindfulness (45)
• Motivation & Goals (45)
• Optimism & Mindset (34)
• Positive CBT (29)
• Positive Communication (20)
• Positive Education (47)
• Positive Emotions (33)
• Positive Leadership (18)
• Positive Parenting (4)
• Positive Psychology (33)
• Positive Workplace (37)
• Productivity (17)
• Relationships (46)
• Resilience & Coping (38)
• Self Awareness (21)
• Self Esteem (38)
• Strengths & Virtues (32)
• Stress & Burnout Prevention (34)
• Theory & Books (46)
• Therapy Exercises (37)
• Types of Therapy (64)

• Email This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

3 Positive Relationships Exercises Pack