Attachment styles: from Bowlby and Ainsworth to adults

Where the model comes from

From the 1950s on, psychiatrist John Bowlby proposed that infants are born with an attachment system: a drive to seek closeness to their caregivers when they feel threatened. The quality of those early relationships would shape "internal working models" of the self and of others (Bowlby, 1969).

Mary Ainsworth tested these ideas with the Strange Situation procedure, observing how infants react to separation from and reunion with their mother. She described secure, anxious-ambivalent and avoidant patterns (Ainsworth et al., 1978); Mary Main and Judith Solomon later added the disorganized pattern.

In 1987 Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver carried the theory into adult romantic love (Hazan & Shaver, 1987). Kim Bartholomew and Leonard Horowitz (1991) proposed four adult styles based on two dimensions, the view of self and the view of others: secure, preoccupied, dismissing and fearful.

What the research says

Over time researchers found that adult styles are organized along two dimensions: anxiety (fear of rejection and abandonment) and avoidance (discomfort with closeness and dependence). Questionnaires built on these dimensions, such as those analysed by Fraley, Waller and Brennan (2000), are reliable.

Taxometric studies indicate that adult attachment is dimensional: people differ by degree and don't naturally split into types (Fraley et al., 2015). Styles are moderately stable but can change with new relationships and experiences, and one person may show different patterns with a partner, family and friends. Anxiety and avoidance are linked, on average, to lower relationship satisfaction.

Criticisms and debates

The theory is strongly supported, but its pop version tends to overstate childhood determinism and turn styles into labels. There is also debate about how closely self-reported adult attachment matches attachment observed in childhood: the two research traditions are related but don't measure exactly the same thing.

Limitations

Ethea's test uses forced choice among four styles, so the result shows which pattern you recognize most in yourself relative to the others, not your levels of anxiety and avoidance. Someone low on both and someone high on both may see similar profiles. The test has not been validated against research questionnaires and does not assess trauma or specific relationships.

How Ethea adapts the model

Ethea's version has 16 blocks of four statements, one per style; you mark the most and the least like you. We use four styles close to Bartholomew and Horowitz's: Secure, Anxious (preoccupied), Avoidant (dismissing) and Disorganized, the popular name for the fearful style, which combines high anxiety and high avoidance. The texts present styles as patterns that can change, not as a diagnosis.

Test created by Giovanni Oliveira.

References

Links with a DOI go to the original article. Where no DOI is given, the link opens a Google Scholar search.

1. Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and Loss: Vol. 1. Attachment. Basic Books. Search Google Scholar(opens in a new tab)
2. Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of Attachment: A Psychological Study of the Strange Situation. Lawrence Erlbaum. Search Google Scholar(opens in a new tab)
3. Hazan, C., & Shaver, P. (1987). Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(3), 511–524. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.52.3.511(opens in a new tab)
4. 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. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.61.2.226(opens in a new tab)
5. Fraley, R. C., Waller, N. G., & Brennan, K. A. (2000). An item response theory analysis of self-report measures of adult attachment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(2), 350–365. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.78.2.350(opens in a new tab)
6. Fraley, R. C., Hudson, N. W., Heffernan, M. E., & Segal, N. (2015). Are adult attachment styles categorical or dimensional? A taxometric analysis of general and relationship-specific attachment orientations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109(2), 354–368. Search Google Scholar(opens in a new tab)
7. Hicks, L. E. (1970). Some properties of ipsative, normative, and forced-choice normative measures. Psychological Bulletin, 74(3), 167–184. DOI: 10.1037/h0029780(opens in a new tab)
8. Brown, A., & Maydeu-Olivares, A. (2011). Item response modeling of forced-choice questionnaires. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 71(3), 460–502. DOI: 10.1177/0013164410375112(opens in a new tab)
9. Brown, A., & Maydeu-Olivares, A. (2013). How IRT can solve problems of ipsative data in forced-choice questionnaires. Psychological Methods, 18(1), 36–52. DOI: 10.1037/a0030641(opens in a new tab)