Do life events lead to enduring changes in adult attachment styles? A naturalistic longitudinal investigation
Autor: | Pascal R. Deboeck, R. Chris Fraley, Omri Gillath |
---|---|
Rok vydání: | 2021 |
Předmět: |
Adult
Male Longitudinal study Sociology and Political Science Social Psychology 05 social sciences Individuality Life events 050109 social psychology PsycINFO Quarter (United States coin) Object Attachment Life Change Events Interpersonal relationship Attachment theory Humans Female 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences Longitudinal Studies sense organs skin and connective tissue diseases Psychology Social psychology Naturalism |
Zdroj: | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 120:1567-1606 |
ISSN: | 1939-1315 0022-3514 |
Popis: | Research has shown that a variety of life events are associated with changes in adult attachment styles. What is unknown, however, is the extent to which those changes are transient or enduring. To investigate this issue, we followed a sample of over 4,000 people in a multiwave longitudinal study in which people naturalistically experienced a variety of life events (e.g., starting new relationships, changing jobs, average n across events = 392). This allowed us to examine people's attachment trajectories before (Mwaves = 6.51) and after (Mwaves = 8.04) specific life events took place, for spans of time ranging from 6 months to 40 (M = 23 months). We found that half of the life events we studied were associated with immediate changes in attachment styles. However, on average, people tended to revert back to levels of security similar to those that would be expected on the basis of their preevent trajectories. Nonetheless, the average person changed in enduring ways in response to a quarter of the events we studied, suggesting that some experiences lead to enduring changes in attachment. Moreover, there were considerable individual differences in the extent to which people changed: Even in cases in which the average person did not show enduring change, there was evidence that some people became more secure and others less so in enduring ways. The ways in which people construed the events (positive vs. negative) were related to the extent to which their attachment styles changed. We discuss the implications of these findings for theoretical models of attachment dynamics. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved). |
Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
Externí odkaz: |