EARA2006

1
Adult Attachment Theory, Research, and Clinical
Applications
Mario Mikulincer Ety Berant Bar-Ilan
University With the collaboration of Phillip R.
Shaver, University of California, Davis
2
Overview

• Attachment theory deals with the total dependency
  of young children on their adult caregivers the
  construction and maintenance across the lifespan
  of a self or identity in the context of
  relationships sexual attraction, sexual
  behavior, mating, marriage, and parenting and
  peoples reliance on each other for protection,
  emotional support in the face of disappointments,
  stresses, illnesses, conflicts, and losses.

3
Overview

• John Bowlby, was a British psychiatrist and
  psychoanalyst interested in normal and abnormal
  personality development and its implications for
  social problems such as crime and delinquency, in
  addition to such clinical phenomena as anxiety
  disorders, disordered grieving following divorce
  or the death of a loved one, and depression

4
Overview

• In this first lecture, I explain attachment
  theory in its classic and contemporary forms,
  placing special emphasis on core concepts, basic
  principles, and conceptual comparisons and
  bridges with other theoretical frameworks.

5
Core concepts

• Bowlby asked and answered the following question
  Why does maternal deprivation have such a
  potent effect on subsequent personality
  development?
• Bowlby came to the conclusion that a persons
  fundamental sense of safety, social acceptance,
  and well-being rests on the quality of his or her
  social relationships with attachment figures.

6
Core concepts

• Bowlby borrowed from ethology the concept of
  behavioral system, a species-universal,
  biologically evolved neural program that
  organizes behavior in ways that increase the
  chances of survival and reproduction despite
  environmental dangers and demands.

7
The Attachment Behavioral System

• The attachment behavioral system is part of a
  network of behavioral systems, which govern the
  choice, activation, and termination of behavioral
  sequences so as to attain particular goals that
  have adaptive advantages for individual survival
  and reproduction of genes.

8
The Attachment Behavioral System

• Behavioral systems also include learned
  components reflecting the particular history of
  behavioral-system activation by a particular
  person in specific kinds of contexts.

9
The Attachment Behavioral System

• The presumed biological function of the
  attachment behavioral system is to protect a
  person from danger by assuring that he or she
  maintains proximity to caring and supportive
  others These others became a persons attachment
  figures.

10
Defining Attachment Figures and Interactions

• During infancy, primary caregivers are likely to
  serve attachment functions
• In adulthood, a wider variety of relationship
  partners can serve as attachment figures,
  including familiar co-workers, friends, and
  romantic partners.
• They form a persons hierarchy of attachment
  figures

11
Defining Attachment Figures and Interactions

• Attachment-related interactions are not viewed as
  being simply the same as other forms of social
  interaction.
• Attachment figures accomplish three functions
• Target for Proximity Seeking
• Provision of Safe Haven
• Provision of Secure Base for Exploration

12
Defining Attachment Figures and Interactions

• An interaction is attachment-relevant when it
  occurs with a familiar other, or its mental
  representation, in a time of stress, with the
  expectation of receiving protection, comfort, or
  support.
• This protection allows a person to function
  better in other domains such as exploration,
  creative thinking, prosocial behavior, and sexual
  mating.

13
Defining Attachment Figures and Interactions

• The WHOTO questionnaire asks a respondent to name
  the particular people on whom he or she relies
  for various forms of protection, guidance, and
  support.

14
Defining Attachment Figures and Interactions

• Mikulincer, Gillath, Shaver (2002) subliminally
  primed participants with threat words (e.g.,
  failure, separation) and then determined
  indirectly (using reaction times in a lexical
  decision task) which names became more available
  for mental processing when a person felt
  threatened.

15
Defining Attachment Figures and Interactions

• It turned out that the names of attachment
  figures (identified with the WHOTO questionnaire)
  became more available in response to threat word,
  something that did not happen with the names of
  other close relationship partners not mentioned
  in the WHOTO.

16
Attachment-System Activation

• The goal of the system is a sense of protection
  or security.
• This goal is made salient by threats.
• People seek actual or symbolic proximity to an
  attachment figure - the primary strategy of the
  attachment system.
• When security is attained, the attachment system
  is deactivated and the individual returns to
  other activities.

17
Attachment-System Activation

• In infants, the primary attachment strategy
  includes non-verbal expressions of neediness and
  motor behaviors aimed at reestablishing
  proximity.
• In adulthood, it is not necessary to engage in
  actual proximity-seeking behavior.
• It may be sufficient to activate comforting
  mental representations of attachment figures or
  even self-representations associated with these
  partners.

18
Attachment-System Activation

• Mikulincer, Hirshberger, et al. (2001) found that
  subliminal presentation of the names of people
  nominated as attachment figures in the WHOTO
  improve participants self-reported mood during
  an experimental session and unconsciously endow
  formerly neutral stimuli with positive affect.

19
Attachment-System Activation

• Specifically, Mikulincer, Hirshberger, et al.
  (2001) found that activation of mental
  representations of attachment figures led to
  higher liking for unfamiliar Chinese ideographs
  even under threatening conditions and eliminated
  the detrimental effects that threats otherwise
  had on liking

20
Attachment-System Activation

• Bowlby rejected classical psychoanalytic and
  Pavlovian behavioral frameworks that portrayed
  social attachment as a secondary effect of
  feeding.
• Bowlby viewed human beings as naturally inclined
  to seek proximity to familiar, comforting figures
  in times of need

21
Attachment-System Activation

• From an emotion-regulation perspective, smooth
  operation of the attachment system can be viewed
  as a dynamic, homeostatic process aimed at
  restoring emotional equanimity.

22
Attachment-System Activation

• Attachment insecurities interfere with the full
  development of skills associated with the other
  systems.
• Being forced by ones social environment to focus
  only on threats and insecurity distorts and
  interferes with social development and results in
  a person with diminished capacities.

23
Attachment-figure availability

• The functioning of the attachment system depends
  on the availability of a relationship partner in
  times of need, the partners sensitivity and
  responsiveness to ones bids for closeness,
  comfort, and support, and the attachment figures
  ability and willingness to alleviate distress and
  provide a secure base from which to activate
  other behavioral systems.

24
Secure Attachments

• When a relationship partner is available,
  sensitive, and responsive to proximity-seeking in
  times of need, people are likely to feel an inner
  sense of attachment security
• A sense that the world is a safe place, that
  attachment figures are helpful when called upon,
  and that it is possible to explore the
  environment and to engage rewardingly with other
  people.

25
Secure Attachments

• This secure-base script includes the following
  if-then propositions
• If I encounter an obstacle and/or become
  distressed,
• I can approach a significant other for help
• he or she is likely to be available and
  supportive
• I will experience relief and comfort as a result
  of proximity to this person
• I can then return to other activities.

26
Insecure Attachments

• When a relationship partner is available,
  sensitive, and responsive to proximity-seeking in
  times of need, people are likely to feel an inner
  sense of attachment security
• A sense that the world is a safe place, that
  attachment figures are helpful when called upon,
  and that it is possible to explore the
  environment and to engage rewardingly with other
  people.

27
Insecure Attachments

• When a primary attachment figure proves not to
  be physically or emotionally available in times
  of need, not responsive to a persons proximity
  bids, or poor at alleviating distress or
  providing a secure base, the functioning of the
  attachment system is disrupted and the security
  is not attained.

28
Secondary Attachment Strategies

• Negative interactions with an inadequately
  available and responsive attachment figure
  results in the activation of secondary attachment
  strategies.
• Attachment theorists have emphasized two such
  secondary strategies hyperactivation and
  deactivation

29
Hyperactivation Strategies

• Hyperactivation strategies come about in
  relationships where the attachment figure is
  sometimes responsive but only unreliably so,
  placing the attached person on a partial
  reinforcement schedule that seems to reward
  persistence of energetic, strident, noisy
  proximity-seeking attempts.

30
Hyperactivation Strategies

• The main goal of hyperactivation is to get an
  attachment figure to pay more attention and
  provide protection or support.
• These strategies are exaggerations of the primary
  attachment strategy.
• They consist of overdependence on a relationship
  partner for comfort excessive demands for
  attention and care strong desire for enmeshment
  and clinging or controlling behavior.

31
Deactivation Strategies

• Deactivation develops in relationships with
  figures who disapprove closeness and expressions
  of need or vulnerability.
• In such relationships, an individual learns to
  expect better outcomes if signs of need and
  vulnerability are suppressed, proximity-seeking
  is blocked, and the person deal with threats
  alone (what Bowlby called compulsive
  self-reliance.)

32
Deactivation Strategies

• The primary goal of these strategies is to keep
  the attachment system turned off to avoid
  frustration and distress caused by
  attachment-figure unavailability.
• Deactivation requires denying attachment needs,
  steering clear of closeness and interdependence,
  and distancing oneself from threats that can
  cause unwanted activation of the attachment
  system.

33
Attachment Working Models

• Variations in caregiver responses to an
  individuals bids for protection gradually
  produce more enduring and pervasive changes in
  the functioning of the attachment system.
• These long-term effects are explicable in terms
  of the storage of significant interactions with
  an attachment figure within memory.

34
Attachment Working Models

• Bowlby called these representations working
  models and viewed them as the basis of stable
  individual differences in attachment behaviors.
• They include affective memories and contribute
  importantly to expectations and appraisals that
  evoke emotion.

35
Attachment Working Models

• Working models of others Expectations of of
  attachment figures availability and
  responsiveness
• Working models of self representations of the
  selfs lovability and competence.
• These representations organize a persons
  memories of attachment interactions and guide
  future proximity-seeking efforts

36
Networks of Working Models

• A person can hold multiple working models
• Working models form excitatory and inhibitory
  associations with one other.
• These associations favor the formation of more
  abstract and generalized representations of the
  relationship with a specific partner.
• Through excitatory and inhibitory links with
  models representing relationships with other
  people, more generic and abstract working models
  are formed.

37
Networks of Working Models

• The end result of this process is a memory
  network that includes episodic memories,
  relationship-specific models, and generic models
  of attachment security and insecurity.
• With respect to a relationship and across
  different relationships, people can sometimes
  think about them in secure terms and at other
  times think about them in more insecure terms.

38
Networks of Working Models

• Overall, Fletcher, and Friesen (2003) found that
  a hierarchical arrangement of specific and global
  working models best fit the data, indicating that
  models for specific relationships (e.g., with
  particular family members) are nested within
  relationship-domain representations (e.g., family
  members), which in turn are nested within more
  global models.

39
Accessibility of working Models

• Each working model within the network differs in
  cognitive accessibility (the ease with which it
  is activated).
• The accessibility of each model is determined by
  the amount of experience on which it is based,
  the number of times it has been applied in the
  past, and the density of its connections with
  other working models.

40
The Most Chronically Accessible Working Model

• At a relationship-specific level, the model
  representing the typical interaction with an
  attachment figure has the highest accessibility
  in subsequent interactions with that person.
• At a generic level, the model that represents
  interactions with major attachment figures (e.g.,
  parents and romantic partners) becomes the most
  chronically accessible attachment-related
  representation and has the strongest effect
  across relationships and over time.

41
The Most Chronically Accessible Working Model

• Consolidation of a chronically accessible
  working model is the most important process
  accounting for the long-term effects on
  personality functioning of attachment
  interactions.
• What began as representations of specific
  interactions with a parent during childhood
  become personality characteristics, tend to be
  applied in new situations and relationships, and
  shape attachment behaviors in adulthood.

42
Importance of Contextual Cues

• Contextual cues concerning a partners
  availability as well as imagined encounters with
  supportive or non-supportive others can activate
  congruent working models, even if they are
  incongruent with a persons chronically
  accessible working model.
• A chronically insecure person can feel more
  secure in specific situation that activate less
  dominant representations of security.

43
Signs of threat?
Activation of other behavioral systems

No
-
Yes
Attachment-system activation
attachment security, distress alleviation
Security-based strategies

Is attachment figure available?
Yes
-
No
Insecurity, distress compounding
Is proximity seeking a viable option?
Deactivating strategies
No
Yes
Hyperactivating strategies
44
IF-Then Propositions

• If threatened, seek proximity and protection from
  an attachment figure (or some stronger, wiser,
  and supportive force, such as God).
• If an attachment figure is available and
  supportive, relax, enjoy and appreciate the
  feeling of being loved and comforted, and
  confidently return to other activities.
• If an attachment figure is unavailable, either
  intensify efforts to achieve proximity and
  comfort or deactivate the attachment system

45
Person x Situation

• Each component of the model can be affected by
  specific contextual factors.
• Each component of the model is affected by
  chronically accessible working models.
• The model acknowledges the importance of both the
  context in which the attachment system is
  activated on a particular occasion and
  person-specific variations resulting from
  attachment history and chronically accessible
  working models.

46
Attachment Style -- Definition

• A persons habitual pattern of expectations,
  needs, emotions, and behavior in interpersonal
  interactions and close relationships.

47
Attachment Style in Infancy

• The concept of attachment style was first
  proposed by Ainsworth to describe infants
  responses to separations from and reunions with
  their mother in the strange situation
  assessment procedure.
• Using this procedure, infants were originally
  classified into one of three style categories
  secure, avoidant, or anxious.

48
Socially induced patterns of infant attachment
(Ainsworth)

• Secure Confident that parent is available and
  responsive. Exploration-oriented, emotionally
  positive. Soothes easily. Shows early empathy and
  ability to talk about emotions. (Documented
  origin sensitive, empathic parental caregiving
  coherent parental discussion of emotions)
• Avoidant Cries little during separation and
  actively avoids parent upon reunion. Engages in
  rigid, displaced exploratory activity, turning
  to the neutral world of things without the true
  interest of exploration. (Documented origin
  parental rejection, lack of warmth, discomfort
  with negative emotions, vulnerability, and
  physical contact)
• Anxious Cries a lot, is anxious, angry. Lacks
  confidence that parent is accessible and
  responsive. Inhibited exploration. Attachment
  behavior is too readily activated. (Documented
  origin parental anxiety and uncertainty,
  parental self-centeredness, misperception of the
  childs needs and signals, intrusiveness,
  inconsistency)

49
The Adult Attachment Interview

• Main and her colleagues (1985) devised the Adult
  Attachment Interview (AAI) to study adolescents
  and adults mental representations of attachment
  to their parents during childhood.

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Adult Attachment Scales

• Hazan and Shaver (187) developed a self-report
  measure of adult attachment style.
• In its original form, the measure consisted of
  three brief descriptions of feelings and
  behaviors in close relationships that were
  intended to embody adult analogues of the three
  infant attachment styles.

51
Adult Attachment Scales

• Hazan and Shaver (1987) developed a self-report
  measure of adult attachment style.
• In its original form, the measure consisted of
  three brief descriptions of feelings and
  behaviors in close relationships that were
  intended to embody adult analogues of the three
  infant attachment styles.

52
The Original Adult Attachment Scale
____ I am uncomfortable being close to others
I find it difficult to trust them completely,
difficult to allow myself to depend on them. Im
nervous when anyone gets too close, and
relationship partners often want me to be more
intimate than I feel comfortable being.
(Avoidant, 25) ____ Relationship partners
are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I
often worry that my partner doesnt really love
me or wont want to stay with me. I want to get
very close to my partner, and this sometimes
scares people away. (Anxious, 20) ____ I
find it relatively easy to get close to others
and am comfortable depending on them. I dont
often worry about being abandoned or about
someone getting too close to me. (Secure, 55)
53
Adult Attachment Scales

• Hazan and Shavers study was followed by hundreds
  of others that used the simple forced-choice
  self-report measure.
• Over time, attachment researchers made
  methodological and conceptual improvements to the
  original self-report measure.

54
Attachment Patterns or Styles Not Types, But
Regions in a Continuous Two-Dimensional Space
HIGH AVOIDANCE
DISMISSING AVOIDANT
FEARFUL AVOIDANT
HIGH ANXIETY
LOW ANXIETY
PREOCCUPIED
SECURE
LOW AVOIDANCE
Adapted from Bartholomew Horowitz (1991) and
Fraley Shaver (2000)
55
Attachment Dimensions

• Attachment avoidance reflects discomfort with
  closeness and dependence, preference for
  emotional distance and self-reliance, and the use
  of deactivating strategies to deal with
  insecurity and distress.
• Attachment anxiety reflects a strong desire for
  closeness and protection, intense worries about
  partner availability and ones own value, and the
  use of hyperactivating strategies for dealing
  with insecurity and distress

56
Today, we measure adult attachment patterns with
two self-report scales

• Avoidance (sample items)
• 1. I prefer not to show how I feel deep down.
• 2. I try to avoid getting too close to my
  partner.
• I feel comfortable depending on my partner.
• (reverse-scored)
• I turn to my partner for many things, including
• comfort and reassurance. (reverse-scored)
• Anxiety (sample items)
• I rarely worry about being abandoned.
• (reverse-scored)
• 2. I need a lot of reassurance that my partner
  loves me.
• I get frustrated if my partner is not available
  when needed.
• I resent it when my partner is away from me.

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Attachment Dimensions

• Hundreds of studies using self-report measures of
  adult attachment style have found theoretically
  coherent attachment-style variations in
  relationship quality, mental health, social
  adjustment, ways of coping, emotion regulation,
  self-esteem, interpersonal behavior, and social
  cognitions.

58
Attachment Anxiety

• Anxious people are guided by the goal of getting
  an attachment figure to pay more attention and
  provide protection or support.
• Anxious people tend to hyperactivate attachment
  behaviors.

59
Attachment Anxiety

• To gain a partners attention, care, and support,
  anxious people tend to
• exaggerate the seriousness of psychological and
  physical threats and problems,
• exaggerate their inability to cope autonomously
  with life demands,
• intensify the experience and expression of
  distress,
• and present themselves in degrading, childish, or
  excessively needy ways

60
Attachment Anxiety

• Anxious attachment can increase the frequency and
  intensity of destructive emotions and the
  accessibility of threat-related thoughts, making
  it all too likely that the new, self-manufactured
  sources of distress will mingle and become
  confounded with old ones.

61
Attachment Anxiety

• Anxious attachment damages a persons self-image
  by emphasizing helplessness and vulnerability to
  rejection
• It encourages negative appraisals of others (who
  are seen as untrustworthy, unfaithful, or
  frustrating).
• It places people at risk for emotional and
  adjustment problems.

62
Avoidant Attachment

• Avoidant people have two main goals in
  relationships
• (a) gaining whatever they need while maintaining
  distance, control, and self-reliance
• (b) ignoring or denying needs and avoiding
  negative emotional states that might trigger
  attachment-system activation.

63
Avoidant Attachment

• The first goal is manifested in observable
  attempts to control and maximize psychological
  distance from a partner avoid interactions that
  require emotional involvement, intimacy,
  self-disclosure, or interdependence and deny or
  suppress attachment-related thoughts and feelings
  that might imply or encourage closeness,
  cohesion, or consensus.

64
Avoidant Attachment

• The second goal is reflected in reluctance to
  think about or confront personal weaknesses and
  relational tensions and conflicts unwillingness
  to deal with a partners distress or desire for
  intimacy and security and suppression of
  thoughts and fears related to rejection,
  separation, or loss.

65
Avoidant Attachment

• Avoidant people try to inhibit or exclude from
  awareness thoughts or feelings that imply
  vulnerability, neediness, or dependence, which
  results in ignoring important information about
  psychological or physical threats, personal
  weaknesses, and attachment-figure responses.

66
Avoidant Attachment

• Avoidant individuals defensively inflate their
  self-views in order to feel less vulnerable and
  less interested in relying on others.
• They tend to denigrate partners, dismiss or
  downplay their needs, and distrust them.
• Avoidant attachment also impairs a persons
  ability to regulate negative emotions, causing
  avoidant individuals to keep anger and resentment
  alive internally.

67
The End

• In the next lecture, we will begin to review the
  knowledge attachment researchers coined about the
  psychological correlates and consequences of
  individual differences in adult attachment styles
  (secure, avoidant, anxious or scores along the
  dimensions of attachment anxiety and avoidance).