Attachment styles are systematic, habitual patterns of expectations, emotions, and behaviours that people exhibit in their close relationships.
Formed initially through childhood experiences with caregivers, these styles are primarily defined in adulthood by two dimensions: attachment anxiety (a fear of rejection and abandonment) and attachment avoidance (a discomfort with emotional closeness and reliance on others).
The intersection of these two dimensions creates four distinct adult attachment styles, which define how individuals view themselves and others.
What are the 4 attachment styles?
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’).
- 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.
Not sure what your attachment style is? You can easily find out by taking our attachment style quiz.
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.
As Adults
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.
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.
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.
As Children
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.
As Adults
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.
As Children
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.
Avoidant attachment occurs because the mother ignores the emotional needs of the infant.
As Adults
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.
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.
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.
As Children
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.
As Adults
“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
The continuity hypothesis posits that infant-caregiver bonds serve as the foundational blueprint for all subsequent social development.
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.
According to this hypothesis, the early infant-caregiver bond creates a template for future social connections.
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)
In other words, a child securely attached in infancy is predicted to have healthy, secure relationships in adulthood.
The Mechanism of Continuity: The Internal Working Model
Early experiences are encoded into internal working models of attachment.
Internal working models are mental representations of the self and others that guide expectations about social interactions.
These models function as a psychological lens, filtering how individuals interpret intimacy and support throughout their lives.
While attachment styles are not immutable, they demonstrate significant stability across decades.
Intergenerational Continuity
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.
Additionally, the same study also found that dismissive adults were often parents to avoidant infants.
In contrast, preoccupied adults were often parents to anxious 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 Vulnerabilities
Insecure attachment is a fundamental risk factor for developing chronic mental health disorders.
Those with preoccupied or fearful styles are most vulnerable to clinical depression and anxiety.
This vulnerability stems from a lack of Emotional Regulation. Emotional regulation is the ability to monitor and manage one’s emotional reactions effectively.
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Anxious Attachment: These individuals experience Hypervigilance. Hypervigilance is a state of extreme alertness to signs of social rejection. This leads to constant rumination and negative thought patterns.
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Avoidant Attachment: These individuals tend to suppress their emotions. While they may appear calm, this defense often collapses under extreme pressure. This can lead to intense self-criticism or “achievement-oriented” depression.
Maladaptive Health Behaviors
Insecure attachment impairs the ability to self-regulate, leading to risky lifestyle choices. These behaviors often serve as misguided attempts to soothe emotional distress.
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Substance Use: Insecurely attached adolescents are more likely to use nicotine, alcohol, and drugs.
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Eating Disorders: There is a high correlation between insecure bonds and obesity or restrictive eating.
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Treatment Non-adherence: Avoidant adults often ignore medical advice. They are less likely to seek preventative screenings or follow medication schedules for chronic illnesses like diabetes.
Sleep Disturbances and Pain Perception
Attachment insecurity degrades the body’s ability to heal through rest.
Nighttime acts as a psychological trigger because it involves separation. Adults with high attachment anxiety report significantly poorer sleep quality. They spend less time in the deep, restorative stages of sleep.
Additionally, these individuals exhibit Pain Catastrophizing.
Pain catastrophizing is a tendency to exaggerate and dwell on physical discomfort. This mindset lowers the threshold for pain, creating a cycle of distress and physical exhaustion.
COVID-19 pandemic
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 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.
How Attachment Style Is Measured
The measurement of attachment style spans the entire lifespan, utilizing distinct methodologies tailored to an individual’s developmental stage.
In infancy and early childhood, attachment is measured through direct observation of behavior.
In adulthood, measurement splits into two primary traditions: developmental and clinical psychologists evaluate unconscious states of mind through narrative interviews, while social and personality psychologists assess conscious beliefs and behaviors using dimensional self-report questionnaires.
Children: Ainsworth’s Strange Situation
The Strange Situation Procedure (SSP) serves as the primary standardized laboratory assessment for determining infant attachment quality.
This 21-minute observational method measures how children aged 12 to 18 months manage interpersonal stress.
The SSP utilizes a series of eight scripted episodes to elevate infant distress incrementally.
This structured progression allows observers to witness the transition from exploration to attachment-seeking behavior.
Researchers focus on the Attachment Behavioral System; this refers to an innate psychological program that drives infants to seek proximity to caregivers during times of perceived threat.
By placing infants in a novel environment, the SSP triggers specific behaviors.
These actions reveal whether the child views the caregiver as a Secure Base. A secure base is a supportive figure who allows the infant to explore the world with confidence.
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.
Adult Attachment Interview
The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) measures an adult’s Internal Working Model.
An internal working model is a mental template of relationships based on early childhood experiences.
This semi-structured interview focuses on the Narrative Coherence of the speaker. Narrative coherence is the ability to present a logical, integrated, and consistent account of one’s past.
AAI Narrative Classifications
Researchers code transcripts based on how well the speaker adheres to linguistic rules of cooperation.
| Classification | Narrative Style | Childhood Experience Correlation |
| Secure-Autonomous (F) | Balanced and clear; integrates good and bad memories. | Consistent and sensitive caregiving. |
| Dismissing (Ds) | Brief and sterilized; claims “I don’t remember” or idealizes parents without proof. | Rejection or emotional unavailability. |
| Preoccupied (E) | Long and rambling; filled with current anger or passive confusion. | Inconsistent or intrusive caregiving. |
| Unresolved (U) | Lapses in logic or speech when discussing trauma or loss. | Significant unresolved trauma or grief. |
Self-Report Questionnaires
Social psychologists focus on conscious, explicit beliefs regarding romantic intimacy.
These measures typically treat attachment as a location on two continuous, Orthogonal Dimensions.
Orthogonal dimensions are two independent scales that do not influence each other’s score.
Dimensional Scales
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Attachment Anxiety: This scale measures the fear of abandonment and the need for constant reassurance.
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Attachment Avoidance: This scale measures the level of discomfort with emotional closeness and the desire for self-reliance.
The Experiences in Close Relationships (ECR) scale is the primary tool in this tradition.
It uses 36 items to plot individuals into a four-category model:
- Secure (low anxiety/low avoidance),
- Preoccupied (high anxiety/low avoidance),
- Dismissing-Avoidant (low anxiety/high avoidance),
- Fearful-Avoidant (high anxiety/high avoidance).
Can Your Attachment Style Change?
Is our attachment style a “one-size-fits-all” trait that follows us everywhere, or does it shift depending on who we are with?
The Hierarchy of Attachment
Bartholomew and Horowitz (1991) argue that attachment is a stable individual difference, an inner guide that stays consistent across all relationships.
However, others suggest we hold multiple models simultaneously.
Research by Caron et al. (2012) suggests our attachment models function like a set of Russian dolls:
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The Global Model: A large, overarching style that covers all types of relationships.
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Domain-Specific Models: Smaller models tailored to specific categories, such as family, friends, or romantic partners.
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Relationship-Specific Models: The smallest dolls, representing beliefs about a single, specific person.
While these models are related, they aren’t identical. You might feel secure with your parents but experience deep insecurity with a romantic partner (Cozzarelli, Hoekstra, & Bylsma, 2000).
Stability vs. Flexibility
While attachment styles are often resistant to change, they are not set in stone.
Studies generally show a 70/30 split in stability:
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70% Stability: Most people maintain the same attachment style over long periods.
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30% Flexibility: Nearly a third of individuals experience a shift in their attachment style.
Key Research Findings:
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Short-term shifts: Baldwin and Fehr (1995) found that 30% of adults changed their style in as little as a week or a few months, with “anxious-ambivalent” individuals being the most likely to fluctuate.
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Long-term shifts: A 20-year study by Waters et al. (2000) found that 72% of adults held the same classification they had as infants. Those who changed often did so following major negative life events, though change can also occur during positive growth.
The Path to “Earned Security”
John Bowlby (1969) viewed attachment as a series of diverging pathways.
The further you travel down one path (security or insecurity), the harder it is to switch, but it is never impossible.
While the internal working models formed in childhood act as prototypes that powerfully guide future interactions, attachment styles are not permanent destinies.
They can and do change over time in response to major life events, therapy, or new, disconfirming relationship experiences
One of the most encouraging concepts in psychology is earned security.
This describes individuals who grew up in adverse or insecure environments but, through self-reflection, therapy, or supportive adult relationships, developed a secure state of mind as adults.
How Partners Facilitate Change (The ASEM Model)
The Attachment Security Enhancement Model (ASEM) explains how romantic partners can help “rewrite” an insecure partner’s internal script.
This happens through two phases: Short-term Buffering and Long-term Revision.
| Attachment Style | Short-Term “Buffering” (Managing the Symptom) | Long-Term “Revision” (Healing the Core Wound) |
| Anxious | Use “Safe” strategies: Constant reassurance, soothing, and visible displays of commitment. | Improve Model of Self: Validate their personal goals and help them build self-efficacy and independence. |
| Avoidant | Use “Soft” strategies: Respecting their need for autonomy and making non-demanding requests. | Improve Model of Others: Share non-threatening, positive experiences to show that depending on others is safe. |
Over the long term, partners can help revise underlying insecure working models by targeting the core wound.
For an anxious partner, this means validating their personal goals and fostering self-efficacy (improving the model of self).
For an avoidant partner, this involves sharing enjoyable, non-threatening experiences that demonstrate the positive benefits of dependency (improving the model of others).
Through continuous responsive and sensitive interactions, individuals can fundamentally shift toward a more secure attachment orientation.
Further Information
- Attachment Style Quiz
- 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
References
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.
Coflin, K., & Powell, D. N. (2024). Comparison of emerging adults’ bid responses based on their gender and attachment. Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice, 13(3), 224–236.
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Attachment Style Quiz
Discover your attachment style based on the ECR-RS, a validated measure of attachment anxiety and avoidance in close relationships.
This short 9-item questionnaire assesses two core dimensions of adult attachment: anxiety (the degree to which you worry about rejection and abandonment) and avoidance (the degree to which you are uncomfortable with closeness and dependence on others).
Your scores on these two dimensions determine which of four attachment styles best describes your pattern of relating to others: secure, anxious-preoccupied, dismissive-avoidant, or fearful-avoidant.
Based on: Fraley, R. C., Heffernan, M. E., Vicary, A. M., & Brumbaugh, C. C. (2011). The Experiences in Close Relationships—Relationship Structures questionnaire. Psychological Assessment, 23(3), 615–625.
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