Attachment Theory and Close Relationships

Abstract

In the 1980s, two distinct programs of research were initiated to investigate patterns of attachment in adulthood. In one line of research, Main and her colleagues focused on the possibility that adult "states of mind with respect to attachment" (i.e., adults' current representations of their childhood relationships with parents) affected parenting behavior, which in turn influenced the attachment patterns of the parents' young children. Members of Main's research group interviewed parents about their childhood family relationships and then searched for scorable features of the interview transcripts that could "postdict" their infants: already known attachment classifications in the Ainsworth Strange Situation (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978). In subsequent predictive studies using this Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; George, Kaplan, & Main, 1985) procedure , the research group confirmed that parents' interview codes were associated with independent assessments of their infants' attachment classifications (a connection that has since been replicated many times; see van IJzendoom, 1995, for a review). Infants classified as "avoidant" in the Strange Situation had primary caregivers who themselves were dismissing of attachment-related memories and feelings; infants classified as "anxious" had primary caregivers who were anxiously preoccupied with attachment-related issues; and infants classified as "secure" had caregivers who were "free and autonomous" with respect to attachment. In subsequent work, a fourth infant pattern, "disorganized," was found to be associated with caregivers who were "unresolved" with respect to losses and traumas in their attachment history. In the second, completely independent line of research, Hazan and Shaver (1987), who had been studying adolescent and adult loneliness, followed up Weiss's (1982) idea that chronic loneliness is associated with insecure attachment. Reasoning that most chronically lonely young adults were unsuccessfully seeking a secure romantic attachment, and that orientations to romantic relationships might be an outgrowth of previous attachment experiences, Hazan and Shaver devised a simple self-report questionnaire for adults based on Ainsworth's three patterns of childhoOd attachment: secure, avoidant, and anxious. The measure asked people to think back across their most important romantic relationships and decide which of the three types was most self-descriptive. In subsequent studies, this measure and several variants of it have been related to a host of theoretically relevant personality ':ariables, behaviors, and experiences in close relationships (for reviews, see Shaver & Clark, 1994; Shaver & Hazan, 1993). Although a few studies have correlated this measure with retrospective reports of childhood experiences with parents, the bulk of research in this tradition has focused on the influence of attachment patterns on personal adjustment and adult relationships.