Adult attachment stability: Is there a reason for pesimism ...



The role of attachment in adulthood: Is there a reason for pesimism or optimism?

Željka Kamenov

Department of Psychology

University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Zagreb, Croatia

Running head: The role of attachment in adulthood

Correspondence to be addressed to:

Željka Kamenov

Department of Psychology

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

University of Zagreb

I. Lučića 3

10000 Zagreb

e-mail: zkamenov@ffzg.hr

If you ask psychologists about the importance of attachment in human lives, almost everyone would stress that an individual’s attachment plays an important role in his or her psychological functioning. The term attachment is usually used to refer to the relationship between a mother and a child. That is, indeed, the basic example of attachment, if the mother is the one who takes care of the child. But, a child can also be attached to the father, grandmother, grandfather, and other significant adults. Whereas in childhood parents are usually the main objects of attachment, during adolescence the hierarchy of the objects of attachment changes - young people become more oriented towards their peers. Although parents do not cease to be objects of attachment at that age nor later in life, it is believed that they are slowly becoming “objects of attachment in reserve”. During adulthood, people become attached to their friends and lovers, or any other people with whom they may be in a long emotional relationship, regardless of its quality.

Bowlby (1969) defines attachment as an affective relationship characterized by a tendency to demand and retain closeness with certain persons, especially when an individual is under stress. He proposed that human infants are born with a repertoire of attachment behaviors designed by evolution to assure proximity to supportive others as a means of securing protection from physical and psychological threats and promoting affect regulation and healthy exploration. These proximity-seeking behaviors are organized into an attachment behavioral system, which evolved biologically because it increased the likelihood of survival and reproduction among primates born with immature capacities for locomotion, feeding and self-defense. Although the attachment system is most important early in life, Bowlby claimed that it is active over the entire lifespan and is manifested in thoughts and behaviors related to proximity seeking in times of need.

Attachment styles in infancy

Attachment is formed in infancy between a child and a person taking care of the child, who, in most cases, is the mother. In his theory, Bowlby (1973) also described important individual differences in attachment system functioning. In his view, these individual differences are derived from reactions of the caregiver to attachment system activation and from internalization of these reactions in the form of internal working models (i.e., mental representations) of self and other.

Depending on the mother’s behavior towards the newborn, the quality of their relationship, the mother’s noticing of the child’s signals and their correct interpretation, adequate responding, care and gentleness, three types of the child’s attachment to the mother could be formed: secure attachment, avoidant attachment, or anxious-ambivalent attachment (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978). If the mother notices the child’s signals, interprets them correctly and responds adequately, with care and gentleness, her child will develop a secure attachment style. On the other hand, if the mother is cold and does not respond to the child’s needs, the child will develop an avoidant attachment style. Finally, the mother who sometimes responds to her child’s needs with warmth and care, and sometimes coldly ignores them, will probably have a child with an anxious-ambivalent attachment style.

Asumptions about the attachment styles continuity

Although the attachment theory emerged as an explanation of the emotional relationship between a child and a caregiver, Bowlby (1969) thinks that the same attachment style system exists and functions throughout the individual’s lifetime. Attached behavior becomes organized within one’s self as an internal working model that defines emotional relationships during one’s life. Namely, a child develops an internal working model based on the mother’s adequate responding to the child’s needs. This internal working models shape the child’s expectations of other people, as well as of self. Knowing how often our expectations define our perception, cognition and behavior (e.g., self-fulfilling prophecy), it is not surprising that internal working models developed in childhood can be resistant to change and can have long-term continuity in shaping our world. Based on the attachment theory, it can be concluded that the type of attachment once adopted in childhood structures the quality of relationships in adolescence and adult life.

Models of adult attachment

The theory of attachment offers a promising theoretical framework for understanding friendship, marriage, romantic and other human relationships. Based on these ideas, several authors continued in the 1980’s research in the field of adult attachment. Hazan and Shaver (1987), pioneers in the field, conceptualized romantic love, or pair bonding, as an attachment process that is characterized by dynamics similar to infant-parent attachment. When an individual is feeling distressed, sick, or threatened, the partner is used as a source of safety, comfort, and protection. For example, adults typically feel safer and more secure when their partner is nearby, accessible, and responsive. In that case the partner may be used as a “secure base” from which one could more freely explore the environment as part of leisure or engage in more creative work projects (e.g., Hazan & Shaver, 1990).

Hazan and Shaver (1987) adopted Ainsworth and her colleagues’ (1978) three-category scheme as a framework for organizing individual differences in romantic relationships and they argued that the same three types of attachment existing in childhood can be seen in adults. Trust in people, as well as easiness with which they make close contacts with others are typical of securely attached individuals. Individuals with the anxious/ambivalent attachment style have an intensive need for emotional closeness with other people but they are afraid that they are not loved enough. The avoidant attachment individuals do not trust people and avoid being close to anyone. Based on the three patterns summarized in the final chapter of the book by Ainsworth et al. (1978), Hazan and Shaver developed brief multi-sentence descriptions of each of the three proposed attachment types (see Figure 1). In their initial studies, respondents were asked to think back across their history of romantic relationships and indicate which of the three descriptions best captured the way they generally think, feel and behave in their romantic relationships.

Figure 1 around here

Bartholomew (1990), however, argued that avoidant attachment could be the result of two different motives and, therefore, distinguished two different forms of this attachment style. One is motivated by the defense mechanism of self-sufficiency and is called dismissive attachment, while the other is motivated by the fear of anticipated refusal from other individuals and it is called fearful attachment. Unlike Hazan and Shaver, whose starting point was the work of Ainsworth and her colleagues, Bartholomew starts from the Bowlby's theory framework, in which individuals internalize their experiences with caregivers, resulting in two notions which serve as the so-called working models: self model and model of others. These two dimensions provide the basis from which four attachment styles spring, depending on whether the individual has a positive or a negative model of self and others (see Figure 2).

Figure 2 around here

Individuals with a positive model of self and a positive model of others will develop the secure attachment style, which means that they will feel at ease both with intimacy as well as with autonomy. On the other hand, individuals with a positive model of self, but a negative model of others will develop the dismissive attachment style, which means that they refuse being intimate with other people and tend to be totally independent. In contrast, individuals who have a positive model of other people but a negative model of themselves have the preoccupied attachment style; they are very anxious about their relationships and afraid of being abandoned. Finally, individuals with both a negative model of self and a negative model of others have the fearful attachment style, which means that they fear intimacy and tend to avoid other people.

Over the past two decades, there has been an explosion of research extending Bowlby’s (1969) and Ainsworth’s (Ainsworth et al., 1978) work on attachment in infancy to a broader theory of human functioning (see Mikulincer & Shaver, 2003, for an extensive review). The body of literature on adult attachment styles strongly supports the importance of secure attachments for well-being and interpersonal functioning. Studies have shown that individuals classified as securely attached displayed less emotional distress and negative affect (Simpson, 1990), fewer physical symptoms (Hazan & Shaver, 1990), and lower fear of death (Mikulincer, Florian, & Tolmacz, 1990). They have been found to be more willing to seek support when needed (Butzel & Ryan, 1997; Shaver & Hazan, 1993), and to have relationships characterized by more positive affect (Simson, 1990), greater longevity (Feeney & Noller, 1990; Hazan & Shaver, 1987), and more stability (Collins & Read, 1990; Kirkpatrick & Hazan, 1994) as well as by greater trust, commitment, satisfaction, and interdependence (Collins & Read, 1990; Feeney & Noller, 1990; Mikulincer, 1998; Shaver & Hazan, 1993; Simpson, 1990). The benefits of the attachment security for adults are so widespread that Mikulincer and Florian (1998) consider it a general resilience factor across the life span.

Measures of adult attachment

In their study published in 1987, Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver first tried to capture types of attachment in adult romantic relationships. Hazan and Shaver described the ways in which adults belonging to each of the three categories of attachment would behave in their romantic relationships, and the participants were to choose the description which described them best (see Figure 1).

At least two important developments in measuring adult attachment followed: (1) several authors formed items based on descriptions of different attachment types and added the level of agreement scale, analyzed factors and turned them into continuous scales; (2) Kim Bartholomew (1990) suggested the four types of adult attachment concept. She also developed the nominal (RQ) and continuous scale (RSQ) of the four attachment types, and of the two conceptual dimensions underlying those four types (Bartholomew & Shaver, 1998).

Alongside the development of these two measures, other researchers continued to develop their own instruments. Some tried to capture the two described dimensions while others tried to return to the original thesis of Bowlby and Ainsworth. In 1998, Brennan, Clark, and Shaver published their scale, The Experiences in Close Relationships Inventory, based on the unique factor analysis of all the known self-evaluation attachment scales applied to many adult respondents. The instrument was composed by combining items of 60 subscales that deal with adult attachment. Brennan found 12 specific constructive factors. Their factorization resulted in 2 second-order factors, which were clearly identified as “anxiety” and “avoidance”.

Anxiety refers to the fear of rejection or abandonment whereas avoidance reflects the experience of discomfort caused by closeness and addiction to others. Out of a group of 323 items, the authors sorted out 18 items for each subscale, taking the items that had the highest correlation with the factors of the higher rank. According to Brennan et al. (1998), the Experience in Close Relationships Inventory is a self-evaluative scale of 36 items aimed at measuring the respondents' score on each dimension, as well as the respondents’ attachment style based on the combination of results obtained on both dimensions.

Although the instrument provided by Brennan et al. (1998) is still considered one of the best attachment measures for adults (Crowell, Fraley, & Shaver, 1999), the authors suggest that continuous efforts should be made in developing and improving attachment measures. One of the steps made in that direction was made by Fraley, Waller and Brennan (2000), who developed the Experience in Close Relationships Inventory - Revised, a 36 item scale, possible to use on-line.

Our research on adult attachment (since 2001 untill today)

I have found myself drawn to the research on adult attachment by mentoring some graduate work of my students. Although I was interested in the field, I had some reservations because most of the research done so far on adult attachment focused mainly on the relationship with romantic partners (e.g., Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991; Shaver & Fraley, 1997; Fraley & Waller, 1998). However, attachment theory predicts that attachment style once formed in childhood defines the structure and quality of later relationships with significant others, which means not only romantic partners, but also friends and family members. Therefore, in order to understand and explain adult relationships, it is of extreme importance to change the focus of research and redirect attention to other types of adult close relationships.

In 2001, together with my colleague Margareta Jelić, I started with a series of studies on adult attachment, designed to test some hypotheses about the attachment styles stability. Each of our studies opened some new questions and leaded to another study, as well as attracted some other colleagues to join us in our research. In the following part of this article, I will present some of our studies and findings, which can roughly be divided in three lines of research: (1) consistency of the adult attachment style across different types of close relationships, (2) attachment and personality, and (3) romantic partners’ attachment styles compatibility.

The first step we took was the adaptation of The Experience in Close Relationships Inventory by Brennan et al. (1998). In order to assess the level of adult attachment of Croatian participants, the scale had to be translated and this Croatian version had to be validated. The validation study (Kamenov & Jelić, 2003) was divided into two parts. Participants were undergraduate students of University of Zagreb, both male and female (N1=210; N2=150). Based on the results of the first part of the study and the psychometric and logical analyses of the ECR Inventory’s items, the scale was shortened. In the second part of the study, the cross-validation of this shortened Croatian version of the ECR Inventory was made.

Findings suggest that the shortened version of the ECR Inventory avoids content redundancy, while maintaining psychometric characteristics of the original instrument. Latent structure of the scale remained the same, showing two orthogonal factors - avoidance and anxiety, each consisting of 9 items. The reliability of the new, shorter scale was almost as high as of the original. Obtained Cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficients were .87 for Avoidance, and .82 for Anxiety subscale. Cross-validation of the new scale confirmed the expected psychometric characteristics.

First line of research

In his original attachment theory, Bowlby (1969) assumed that the attachment style a child forms with his or her mother (or caregiver) continues to exist as the inner working model that affects his or her close relationships in adulthood. For more than twenty years psychologists and psychiatrists have studied adult attachment and compared it with the attachment in infancy. But most of the studies were concerned solely with attachments in romantic relationships (Brennan et al, 1998; Fraley & Shaver, 2000; Hazan & Shaver, 1987; Kirkpatrick & Davis, 1994: Kirkpatrick & Hazan, 1994; Simpson, 1990), as if these were the only close relationships that adult people have and as if the romantic partners were the only ones that they form attachment with. This is a far cry from Bowlby’s original idea!

Thus, if we follow Bowlby’s predictions, we will expect to find the same type of attachment style in various types of close relationships that a particular individual has in his or her life. If a certain attachment style functions as an inner working model of an individual, it has to be relatively stable during the lifetime and across different relationships. In other words, a person who has developed the secure attachment style, for example, would show this style in almost every close relationship she or he has, and there would be no danger that she or he will form any of the three remaining inadequate attachment styles. Unfortunately, the opposite is true as well, which means that there would be no chance for a person with the inadequate attachment style in one relationship to form the secure one in another.

However, research findings do not support this assumption completely, although they are somewhat consistent with it. Findings indicate that attachment styles are moderately stable throughout the first 20 years of life (Fraley, 1999; Baldwin & Fehr, 1995; Klohnen & Bera, 1998; Scharfe & Bartholomew, 1994). This is especially true for the secure attachment style, which in some studies proved to be the most stable (Kirkpatrick & Hazan, 1994; Crowell & Treboux, 1995).

The aim of our first study (Kamenov & Jelić, 2005) was to assess the stability of attachment styles across students’ romantic relationships, friendships and family relations. First, we were interested in finding out whether the type of relationship is a relevant variable and whether the incidence of a particular attachment style differs with regard to the type of close relationship. According to Bowlby’s predictions, this should not be the case - an individual should form the same attachment style in all his or her relations with significant others.

Therefore, the main goal of this study was to investigate whether there is a correspondence between attachment styles in different types of close relationships (with partners, friends, and with family members). Strong correlations would support the idea of attachment type consistency in various forms of close relationships. If this is not the case, if correlations are low, we would particularly be interested in finding out whether individuals compensate for inadequate relationships with partners by having more adequate relationships with their friends or family members.

The sample consisted of 210 male and female undergraduate students of psychology and Police College from the University of Zagreb. Average age of participants was 21 years. The Experiences in Close Relationship Inventory developed by Brennan et al. (1998) was administered. This measure categorizes participants into four categories depending on their attachment style as defined by Bartholomew. The categorization can be made according to the respondent's scores on two dimensions: Anxiety and Avoidance. There are18 items for each dimension, correlated strongly with the underlying factor. Two subscales, as well as factors they are based on, do not correlate significantly (r = .12, ns). Obtained Cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficients are .94 for Avoidance, and .91 for Anxiety subscale.

The participants were asked to assess how they generally feel in their relationships with romantic partners. In order to assess the level of attachment toward other objects (friends and family members), the instrument was slightly modified. The instructions for each version as well as objects of attachment in each item were changed accordingly. We also changed the order of items in the two new versions of the inventory. The questionnaires were administered simultaneously. Each participant answered all three questionnaires in random order.

The results have shown that the correlations between attachment styles of the same person in various relations are lower than expected. There were no correlations in two styles (dismissive and fearful), and the other two correlations were barely significant. When the number of matches of the same attachment style in romantic relationships, friendships and family relations was computed, the results were astonishing. With the exception of the secure attachment style, in which 50% of matches were found, the other attachment styles proved to be highly unstable. In none of them the percentage of matches exceeded 10%. This means that there is more than a 90% chance that an individual who has the preoccupied, dismissive or fearful attachment style in one type of close relationships will have a different attachment style in other types of relationships. In other words, these attachment styles are not at all stable. But, which style would the person form instead? Would it be a random choice, or is there some kind of pattern? Our results have shown that there is a pattern. The secure attachment style is the most frequent style. This is not surprising as research has so far shown that secure attachment is the most adaptive attachment style. Studies suggest that the secure attachment style in infancy is considered the most desirable style by mothers (van Ijzendoorn & Sagi, 1999). Furthermore, individuals with this attachment style report being more satisfied with their relationships and the quality of their lives (Feeney, Peterson, & Noller, 1994; Kirkpatrick & Davis, 1994; Kirkpatrick & Hazan, 1994; Simpson, 1990; Senchak & Leonard, 1992). We have found that almost 80% of individuals who have the secure attachment style with their romantic partners maintain the same style in relations with their friends and family members. And more than 50% of individuals that have each of the other three inadequate attachment styles in romantic relationships have secure attachment with either friends or family. We would dare to say that inadequate attachment styles with romantic partners are highly compensated for with the secure one in other, less threatening relationships.

However, quite the opposite interpretation is also possible. We could say that two thirds of our participants have probably developed the secure attachment style in their infancy, and that they still have it in relations with the members of their families and friends. These close relationships last long enough so far and they are used to them, so they could feel secure and comfortable in them. But having in mind that our participants were students who were 21 year old on average, their romantic relationships were probably still superficial and perceived as a way of having fun. They are at the age of experimenting, enjoying their freedom, or at the age of getting to know as many interesting people as they can and trying to find their soul-mates. Most of them are not ready for commitment yet. Studies have shown that, with age, closeness, support and mutual care become more salient as provisions from romantic relationships (Furman & Schaffer, 2003; Shulman & Scharf, 2000; Shulman & Seiffge-Krenke, 2001). Therefore the young age of our sample could be reflected in their answers about the attachment they have in their romantic relationships. In other words, our results could simply be the reflection of the age of our participants.

To show whether this is true or not, we decided to replicate this research with the more mature participants (age 25 - 55), who could have had more experience with their romantic partners. Therefore, their attachment styles reported on applied measures could be based on more accurate appraisal of their typical behavior in those relationships. This should enable us to draw more general conclusions about the stability (or consistency) of adult attachment styles.

In our next study (Jelić, Kamenov, & Cokarić, 2006), the sample consisted of 219 adults (109 men and 110 women), and the average age of participants was 39 years. The shortened version of The Experiences in Close Relationship Inventory (Kamenov & Jelić, 2003) was administered as a measure of attachment in romantic relationships. In order to assess the level of attachment toward other objects (friends and family members), the instrument was slightly modified, as explained earlier. All the participants gave their answers on all three instruments, and instruments were administered in random order. Results were analysed and interpreted both regarding the attachment dimensions and the type of attachment they indicate.

The results have shown that the attachment of adults significantly differs depending on the kind of close relationship. The adults, as well as the students, showed the highest level of anxiety with romantic partners. While students reported the highest level of avoidance in relations with their family members, the adults do not show the difference on the avoidance dimension between different close relationships. There were no gender differences on anxiety dimension neither in the student sample nor in the adult sample. Adult men showed significantly more avoidance than adult women in all three kinds of close relationships, while male students showed more avoidance than female students in relations with their friends and family members, but not with romantic partners.

Correlation coefficients between levels of anxiety and avoidance in attachment across different close relationships (with romantic partners, friends and family members) were computed. Results suggest that there is a significant and relatively respectable stability in anxiety (r range from .50 to .65), but relatively low stability in avoidance (r range from .25 to .39). These coefficients did not significantly differ from the correlation coefficients obtained in student sample. The only exception was a significantly higher correlation between avoidance in romantic and friendly relationships for adult participants (radults = .56; rstudents = .31; t = 3.28; p < .05).

Correlation coefficients between the attachment styles of adults in different types of relationships confirmed what was obtained on students - they ranged from insignificant to .35, and they were equally high in both samples. The highest correlations were those for the secure and preoccupied attachment styles (C range from .23 to .35; p < .01).

We wanted to find out whether the adult individuals also compensate for inadequate attachment to romantic partners with more adequate attachment to their friends or family members. When the number of matches of the same attachment style in romantic relationships, friendships and family relations was computed, the results show that only secure attachment style is relatively stable, while the others are not. The most of adult participants who have one of the three insecure attachment styles with the romantic partners, at the same time do not show the same attachment style in their relationships with friends or with family members, but they show the secure attachment instead.

The results of both our studies (Kamenov & Jelić, 2005; Jelić, Kamenov, & Cokarić, 2006) have shown that most of the people who have any of the insecure attachment styles with their romantic partners do not have the same attachment style with their friends or family members. Some of them do (10 – 30 %), but more than half of them have the secure attachment style in the other two types of close relationships. We would dare to say that inadequate attachment styles with romantic partners are highly compensated for with the secure one in other, less threatening relationships.

This inconsistency of attachment styles across different types of close relationships shed some new light on the long lasting debate about the attachment styles’ stability. These results are difficult to compare with the results of other studies mentioned earlier, because these other studies were focused on the temporal stability of the attachment style formed in the infant-parent relationship, or the attachment style formed in an early stage of the romantic relationship. Nevertheless, the results of our studies show that adult people display more flexibility in their attachment to significant others than they are expected to. This could mean that their internal working models of self and others, formed through their experiences in childhood, are not as stable as it was presumed and that they are subject to change. Our results also show that people tend to form at least one securely attached close relationship with a significant other, who could serve them as a “secure base” and the preserving factor against stress and other threatening experiences in their lives. That makes us optimistic, because it brings out the possibility of influence and therapeutic change of one’s attachment style if needed.

Second line of research

Individual differences in adult attachment behavior are presumed to be the reflections of the expectations and beliefs people have formed about themselves and others on the basis of their attachment histories. Over repeated interactions with the caregiver early in childhood, children develop a set of knowledge structures, or internal working models, representing those interactions and contributing to the regulation of the attachment behavioral system (Bowlby, 1969). According to Hazan and Shaver (1987), these internal working models continue to guide and shape close relationship behavior throughout life (for a review, see Pietromonaco & Feldman Barett, 2000).

Over the past three decades, attachment theory has gained prominence in explaining the basic mechanisms of early personality development. Attachment theorists propose that early attachment patterns that are maintained through childhood have the power of influencing personality development and thus be among the potential forerunners of the basic personality dimensions. Secure or insecure attachment in infancy could be among the important factors influencing the development of many personality features such as sociability, emotionality, curiosity, trust and cooperation. Moreover, early attachment could affect not only isolated personality traits, but the personality organization as well (Thompson 1999, 2000). Early secure attachment with the caregiver should enable adaptive functioning later in life, reflected in the higher levels of emotional stability and positive emotionality as well as in the quantity and quality of interpersonal relations later in life. On the other hand, insecure attachment patterns early in life could lead to higher levels of neuroticism, which refers to the level of negative emotionality. These presumptions about the consequences of attachment experiences for personality have led some theorists to promote attachment theory as a broad theory of personality and personality development (e.g., Shaver & Mikulincer, 2002).

Research so far has extensively documented the important role of attachment styles in adolescent and adult close relations. However, few studies aimed at mapping the adult attachment styles into the wider personality structure. A number of recent studies, using various personality and attachment measures, give empirical support to some of these theoretical expectations. However, due to the inconsistency of attachment concepts and a variety of both personality and attachment measures, the relations of personality as defined by the five-factor model and attachment still remain largely inconclusive.

These studies used a variety of personality measures, predominantly measures of the five-factor model as a common personality taxonomy that has dominated the literature on personality structure over the past two decades (e.g., Ozer & Reise, 1994; Funder, 2001). Five broad traits - neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness - have been widely recognized as basic dimensions of normal personality (McCrae & John, 1992; McCrae & Costa, 1996). However, just a few of them report data collected with NEO Personality Inventory, the most widely used measure of five factors. Those studies used either an earlier version of NEO - PI (Shaver & Brennan, 1992; Griffin and Bartholomew, 1994; Bäckstrom and Holmes, 2001) or a short version of the questionnaire, NEO-FFI (Carver, 1997). Both versions of the instrument have their shortcomings.

The personality – attachment research also used a variety of attachment measures, from the well known three-category self report measure of Hazan and Shaver (1987), which was used in the pioneering study of the relations between personality and attachment (Shaver and Brennan, 1992), to the scales derived by Bartholomew and her colleagues (Griffin and Bartholomew, 1994; Bäckstrom and Holmes, 2001) or some less frequently used measures (Carver, 1997; Bakker et al., 2004).

Recently, Noftle and Shaver (2006) reported the most comprehensive study to date of relations between personality and attachment. Their study offers a detailed summary of previous empirical findings on the relations between attachment and five personality dimensions. The main findings of this summary are that, in the majority of studies, the attachment anxiety is moderately to strongly related to neuroticism, while the attachment avoidance is negatively related to extraversion. Furthermore, both attachment dimensions were generally unrelated to openness to experience. Their own empirical study includes both domain-level and facet-level personality traits of the five-factor model as defined by the NEO PI-R (Costa & McCrae, 1992) and the dimensional measure of adult attachment proposed by Brennan et al. (1998).

The research of Noftle and Shaver (2006) has provided a number of theoretically meaningful relations of personality and attachment, but has some limitations, primarily the gender imbalance of the sample, which consisted predominantly of females. Furthermore, there is a need to extend and validate those findings in a different cultural context, using the validated translations of the same measures.

The aim of our study (Marušić, Kamenov, & Jelić, in press) was primarily to extend the research on personality and attachment into a different cultural context, and to further explore the relations between attachment dimensions and personality on both domain and facet levels. The comparability of the findings is enabled by the existence of validated translations of the most common measures of five personality dimensions and two attachment dimensions. A Croatian version of the NEO PI-R has proven to be a measure of the five factors comparable to the original (Marušić, Bratko & Eterović, 1996; McCrae et al., 1999). There is also a validated Croatian version of the Experience in Close Relationships scale (Kamenov & Jelić, 2003, 2005).

The sample consisted of 352 students from different study groups of the University of Zagreb - Psychology, Law, English language, Engineering and Police Academy. Participants were 216 females and 136 males whose age ranged from 18 to 33 years, with a mean of 21.1 years. At the time of the study, 49.1% of participants were dating and 50.9% were not in a relationship.

Respondents completed a questionnaire package including background variables about their previous relationship experience and information regarding their family of origin. After completing the background questions, the Modified Experiences in Close Relationship Inventory (Kamenov & Jelić, 2003) was administered to participants, followed by the NEO PI-R (Costa & McCrae, 1992).

The major finding of our study is that both attachment anxiety and avoidance are significantly related to the five core dimensions of personality and their facets, although only part of the variance in attachment dimensions could be accounted for by personality variables.

Our results are mainly in line with the majority of previous international studies, thus lending further support to the relations between personality and attachment. However, some of our findings do not have empirical support in previous studies.

In sum, our study offers theoretically meaningful evidence on the relations between attachment dimensions and personality as defined by five-factor model. Furthermore, the main theoretical expectations and findings of the previous studies were replicated here, primarily the most consistent evidence of the positive relations between anxiety and neuroticism and negative relations between avoidance and extraversion. Many facet-level relations between attachment and personality reported by Noftle and Shaver (2006) were further supported by our study, particularly the positive relations between anxiety and neuroticism facets. Furthermore we replicated findings on lower warmth, gregariousness, positive emotions, openness to feelings, trust and altruism and higher modesty in avoidant individuals and lower competence related to insecure attachment. However, there are some notable differences in comparison to previous research. Our study revealed significant negative relations of avoidance and domain openness, while earlier studies report either no relations between openness and attachment dimensions (Shaver & Brennan, 1992) or a low negative correlation with anxiety (Noftle & Shaver, 2006). Furthermore, conscientiousness was weakly related only to attachment anxiety in the female sample and had few facet level correlations, while Noftle and Shaver (2006) report significant negative correlations of both domain and facet level personality scales with attachment dimensions.

The similarity of our research findings with those from previous studies provides further support on the main relations between personality and attachment. Although those two sets of personality domains grew from different conceptual traditions, their shared variance points to substantial overlap. However, the degree of overlap found in our study lends further support to the conclusion that style of adult romantic attachment is not merely a reflection of general personality. Dimensions of adult attachment evidently explain a unique portion of variance in interpersonal functioning, beyond the one explained by five basic personality factors. Future studies could provide further evidence on the developmental dynamics of the two domains within a broader personality system.

This study has explored the personality correlates of two attachment dimensions in romantic relations of young adults. But we have also collected data for each of our participant’s attachment in friendly and family relations. These data are in the process of analysis and will be reported in our next article. However, some results for attachment to friends are allready known, so I will briefly sum them here.

Results have shown significant gender differences both for attachment anxiety and avoidance, with females being more anxious in friendly relations and males being more avoidant. Due to the observed gender differences separate analyses were conducted for both sexes, and revealed somewhat different pattern of correlations for female and male students. Attachment anxiety in the female sample is thus positively correlated with neuroticism and negatively with agreeableness and conscientiousness, while neuroticism is the only significant correlate of anxiety in friendly relations for male students. Avoidance in friendships shows similar negative correlations with extraversion and agreeableness both in male and female sample. Attachment avoidance is also related to low openness, but only for females.

Regression analyses demonstrated that high neuroticism and low agreeableness are significant predictors of attachment anxiety in females, while in males high neuroticism remains the only predictor of anxiety in friendly relations. Low extraversion and agreeableness predict attachment avoidance in friendships both for female and male students.

As it could be seen from this brief summary, the personality correlates of two attachment dimensions in romantic relationships are not completely identical to the personality correlates of attachment to friends. We will see what the results for the attachment to family members will tell us, but there are already some indications that the attachment of the same people in different close relationships is differentially correlated with the personality traits of those people. The question is: What can these results tell us about the predetermination of the attachment styles in close relationships of adults?

As we have mentioned earlier, the attachment theorists propose that early attachment patterns have the power of influencing personality development and shaping the basic personality dimensions. Moreover, some theorists promote the attachment theory as a broad theory of personality organization and personality development (e.g., Thompson, 1999, 2000; Shaver & Mikulincer, 2002). If this is true, how can it be possible that one’s attachment style in one type of adult close relationships (e.g. friendship) is different than the same person’s attachment style in another type of close relationships (e.g., romantic or family relationship), and can be explained with different personality dimensions? This could mean that different aspects of a person’s personality are important for this person’s attachment in various types of close relationships. So, the same person’s early attachment history, which is proved to be important in the formation of this person’s personality, can result in relatively different attachment patterns in this person’s adult close relationships.

Of course, this line of thinking and conclusions need further testing and more research, but the results so far give us again a reason to be optimistic about the possibility of people to adapt and change, and to develop secure attachment to other persons in their lives, even if they have had bad experiences and insecure attachment with their parents in their early years.

Third line of research

Earlier research in the field of adult attachment mostly focused on the attachment style of an individual. Recently the focus has shifted to couples as the unit of analysis. In our attempts to understand more about the adult attachment and its role in adult close relationships, we started a new line of research - assessing the attachment of people in dyads (romantic, friendly and family), the compatibility of their attachment styles, and correlates of various combinations of the attachment styles of individuals in these dyads.

As many others before us, we started with romantic relationships – married couples and couples that live together for at least one year (Tadinac, Kamenov, Jelić, & Hromatko, 2006). First, we wanted to determine the importance of the partners’ attachment for the successful relationship.

The sample consisted of 418 adult heterosexual couples, partners’ age between 18 and 80 (average duration of relationship= 15.5 years). Majority of participants were from urban areas (Zagreb, Split and Osijek) and adequately represent urban population in educational level, income, employment percentage, religion and background variety.

Participants answered a questionnaire that was composed of various scales addressing different variables relevant for a successful romantic relationship, and one of them was the shortened version of The Experiences in Close Relationship Inventory (Kamenov & Jelić, 2003) as a measure of attachment. Global satisfaction of participants with their current relationship was assessed on a 7-point scale. Relationship quality was measured by the modified Quality of Marriage Index (Norton, 1983). Items concerning potential for divorce (Booth & Edwards, 1983), feelings about the future of the relationship and considering alternatives (Stanley & Markman, 1992) were used as a measure of relationship stability.

Contrary to our expectations (and the attachment theory predictions), the results on attachment dimensions - anxiety and avoidance – did not prove to be the important predictors of relationship quality, stability or satisfaction with it. There are many possible interpretations for this finding. One may be high positive correlations of the attachment with the results on other variables included as predictors (e.g., communication, sexual activity), and the other may be a restricted range of results on criteria – most of the couples were at least moderately satisfied with their relationship, find it of high quality, and perceive it relatively stable.

Therefore, all the couples were divided in two groups (successful and less successful) according to their results on all three criteria, and the ANOVAs were computed to test the differences between these two groups on all the variables, including the attachment dimensions. The significant effects on both dimensions were found. There is a significant interaction between sex and the relationship success in the attachment anxiety, meaning that in successful couples both partners are less anxious about their relationship and men are less anxious then their female partners, while in the less successful couples the anxiety is higher and men are more anxious about the relationship than women. The difference in anxiety shown in successful couples reflects well documented and expected sex differences, which obviously has no effect on the partners’ perception of relationship quality, stability and satisfaction with it. On the other hand, a less successful romantic relationship is associated with reverse gender roles (male partners being more worried about the relationship), but this research design can not tell us if this is a cause or a consequence of an unsuccessful relationship. Regarding the attachment avoidance dimension, significant main effects of both sex and relationship success were found. Men show more avoidance than women, and the avoidance of both partners is lower in successful couples than in the less successful ones. For illustration, in successful couples men report less avoidance than women in less successful couples.

In our second study in this area (Kamenov, Jelić, Tadinac, Hromatko, & Pantić, 2006), we compared the results obtained in this sample with the results of younger couples who recently started dating. This time the aim was to determine is there a compatibility between romantic partners’ attachment styles and how is this attachment styles compatibility related to relationship satisfaction, perceived quality of a relationship, as well as its’ stability. The second sample consisted of 187 young heterosexual couples, mostly students, age between 18 and 32 (average duration of relationship= 2.3 years).

The results have shown that the majority of participants from both samples have the secure attachment style, which is consistent with other findings in this area of research. Statistically significant positive correlation coefficients suggest that individuals in couples have attachment styles compatible to their partners. An interesting finding is that individuals with the secure attachment style also have partners with the secure style. Results have shown that in more than 90% of couples with compatible attachment styles, both partners have the secure attachment style. Furthermore, most individuals with any of three insecure attachment styles are in fact in a relationship with a partner who has a secure attachment style. There were only 10-12% of couples in which both partners had insecure attachment styles. This may indicate that a relationship in which both partners are insecurely attached is the least likely to last.

As mentioned earlier, the second goal of this study was to determine how is the attachment styles compatibility related to relationship satisfaction, perceived quality of a relationship, as well as its’ stability. But, with the exception of secure and preoccupied style, other attachment styles were underrepresented to be considered separately or to discuss the compatibility between partners with different insecure attachment styles. Therefore we divided all the couples into three groups: both partners with the secure attachment (secure couples), one partner with the secure and the other with an insecure attachment style (mixed couples), and both partners with the insecure attachment (insecure couples).

Differences in satisfaction with the relationship, relationship quality and relationship stability between the three types of couples were tested by ANOVA. Significant differences were found for student couples on all dependent variables. Securely attached young couples proved to be more satisfied with their relationship then mixed or insecure couples and they perceived their relationship as more stable then insecure couples. The question that remains unanswered is the direction of this relation. Is the secure attachment a necessary factor for a good romantic relationship, or is it a well functioning relationship a factor that enables partners to become securely attached to each other?

Another interesting result of this study is that no differences in satisfaction, perception of quality or stability of the relationship were found between the secure, mixed and insecure couples in the adult sample. These findings suggest that the attachment styles compatibility is more important for the perception of the relationship at the beginning of a relationship then at later stages in a relationship.

These results may indicate that people primarily chose partners with the secure attachment style, no matter which style they have themselves. If they have also a secure one, than this could be a perfect match. If they do not, their partner’s security and easiness with openness, closeness and intimacy could help them to feel better and enjoy this relationship more. However, an alternative interpretation could be the adaptation to the partner during an early stage of a relationship and development of the secure attachment style in at least one member of a dyad. Two interpretations are considered: people tend to chose partners with the secure attachment style or they become securely attached to their partner during a relationship. In order to test these hypotheses, a longitudinal research is continued on young couples who just started dating.

Discussion

Attachment theory is a relatively deterministic theory of human psycho-social functioning. Bowlby’s emphasis on the continuity of early attachment patterns into adulthood suggests that the attachment style developed with primary caretakers have a significant degree of stability over time and across relationships. Thus, early attachment relationships are expected to influence the way people regulate their subsequent interpersonal behaviors and emotions. Research has provided support for this view, demonstrating stability in classifications over time (Crittenden, 1990; Elicker, Englund, & Sroufe, 1992) and even across multiple generations within families (Benoit & Parker, 1994; Fonagy, Steele, & Steele, 1991). In school-age children, attachment to parents has been found to generalize to other attachment figures, such as teachers and peers (Ryan, Stiller, & Lynch, 1994).

The idea that the attachment style in relation to parents might have an influence on attachment style in adult close relationships is relatively uncontroversial and documented rather well. However, hypotheses about the source and degree of overlap between the two kinds of attachment orientations have been controversial and have initiated a lot of debate during the last decade (e.g., Baldwin & Fehr, 1995; Cassidy, 2000; Duck, 1994; Fraley & Shaver, 2000; Hendrick & Hendrick, 1994, Klohnen & Bera, 1998; La Guardia et al., 2000; Shaver & Mikulincer, 2002). Some of the authors are more prone to the prototypic perspective, which claims that the attachment representations once formed in childhood remain stable and have the defining influence on our thoughts, feelings and behavior relevant for interpersonal relationships in adulthood. The others emphasize the data that have shown a substantial degree of no-overlap between the attachment style in infancy and adulthood, or, like our studies have also demonstrated, respectable within-person variability in attachments to different attachment figures. From this perspective, attachment may be a transactional process (Cummings & Cicchetti, 1990), such that a person’s attachment to a particular other could be a function not only of his or her internal working model but also of the experiences with that individual at the particular time (e.g., Kobak, 1994). This view allows the possibility that not only could a person’s attachment vary over time, but also that people could have different attachment styles with different relationship partners or significant others.

In fact, the attachment theory allows both of these views to be accurate. As argued by Hazan and Zeifman (1999), the most important proposition of the theory is that the attachment system continues to influence behavior, thought and feeling in adulthood. Although the social and cognitive mechanisms invoked by attachment theorists imply that continuity may be the rule rather than the exception, these basic mechanisms can predict either continuity or discontinuity, depending on the precise ways in which they are conceptualized. For example, Fraley (1999) discussed two models that make different predictions about the long-term continuity even though they were derived from the same theoretical principles. Each model assumes that individual differences in attachment representations are shaped by variation in experiences with caregivers in early childhood and that these early representations shape the quality of the individual’s subsequent attachment experiences. However, one of the models assumes that existing representations are updated and revised in light of new experiences, which means that these older representations could eventually be “overwritten”.

During the recent years, this revisionist perspective has been supported by a body of empirical data. A longitudinal study by Steele et al. (1998) uncovered a correlation of only .17 between the attachment security at 1 year of age and security in the adult romantic relationships. Crowell, Fraley, and Shaver (1999) found a correlation of .30 between the retrospective measure of a security with a significant parental figure and a current romantic partner. Klohnen and Bera (1998) examined longitudinal data from a group of women who were intensively studied from age 21 to 52. It was found that their attachment style at age 52 was systematically related to theoretically relevant experiences in their lives going all the way back to 21. There is some evidence that the level of attachment anxiety lowers as the romantic relationship continues, and partners’ attachment becomes more similar and more secure (Fraley & Shaver, 2000). Additionally, experiments conducted in Mikulincer’s laboratory for adult attachment showed that the secure attachment could be experimentally induced and that these momentary increases in attachment security could, for example, lead to more prosocial behavior or reduce outgroup hostility (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2001, 2005). The data from our research, which show the intra-personal variation in the attachment to different attachment figures in various types of close relationships, also support this revisionist perspective.

It seems that, in addition to early attachment patterns developed in childhood, current attachment dynamics are likely to be related to previous experiences in close relationships, to the attachment dynamics of one’s current partner, to current life situations, to experiences in psychotherapy, and to contextual activation of attachment-related mental representations in any given situation (Shaver & Mikulincer, 2002). Therefore, it could be concluded that an individual’s attachment style is not “carved in neural stone” nor based only on childhood experiences. Even if this means that a person could never sit back, relax, and enjoy the benefits of his or her secure attachment (because it could be changed), we find it optimistic – it gives hope to all the people who have had any kind of unfortunate attachment history that things could change and that they could improve their interpersonal functioning and their overall well-being as all the others more fortunate ones.

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|SECURE ATTACHMENT |I find it relatively easy to get close to others and am comfortable depending on them|

| |and having them depending on me. I don't often worry about being abandoned or about |

| |someone getting too close to me.  |

|AVOIDANT ATTACHMENT |I am somewhat uncomfortable being close to others; I find it difficult to trust them,|

| |difficult to allow myself to depend on them.  I am nervous when anyone gets too |

| |close, and often, love partners want me to be more intimate than I feel comfortable |

| |being. |

|ANXIOUS/ |I find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I often worry that |

|AMBIVALENT   ATTACHMENT |my partner doesn’t really love me or won’t want to stay with me.  I want to merge |

| |completely with another person, and this desire sometimes scares people away. |

Figure 1 – Measure of adult attachment according to Hazan and Shaver (1987)

| |SELF MODEL |

| |Positive |Negative |

| | | |PREOCCUPIED |

| |Positive |SECURE |ATTACHMENT |

| | |ATTACHMENT | |

|OTHER MODEL | | | |

| |Negative | |FEARFUL |

| | |DISMISSIVE ATTACHMENT |ATTACHMENT |

| | | | |

Figure 2 – Two-dimensional model of attachment styles in adulthood (Bartholomew, 1990)

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