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Adult Attachment Style Across Individuals and Role-Relationships: Avoidance is Relationship-Specific, But Anxiety Shows Greater Generalisability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2012

João M. Moreira
João M. Moreira*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Psychology, University of Lisbon, Portugal. joao.moreira@campus.ul.pt
*
*ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE: João M. Moreira, Faculdade de Psicologia, Universidade de Lisboa, Alameda da Universidade, 1649-013 Lisboa, Portugal.
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Abstract

A generalisability study examined the hypotheses that avoidant attachment, reflecting the representation of others, should be more relationship-specific (vary across relationships more than across individuals), while attachment anxiety, reflecting self-representation, should be more generalisable across a person's relationships. College students responded to 6-item questionnaire measures of these variables for 5 relationships (mother, father, best same-gender friend, romantic partner or best opposite-gender friend, other close person), on 3 (N = 120) or 2 (N = 77) occasions separated by a few weeks. Results supported the hypotheses, with the person variance component being larger than the relationship-specific component for anxiety, and the opposite happening for avoidance. Anxiety therefore seems not to be as relationship-specific as previous research suggested. Possible reasons for discrepancies between the current and previous studies are discussed.

Keywords

attachment stylegeneralisabilityrelationships
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Relationships Research , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , 01 March 2011 , pp. 63 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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