Romantic Love Conceptualized as an Attachment Process

Abstract

This article explores the possibility that romantic love is an attachment process--a biosocial process by which affectional bonds are formed between adult lovers, just as affectional bonds are formed earlier in life between human infants and their parents. Key components of attachment theory, developed by Bowlby, Ainsworth, and others to explain the development of affectional bonds in infancy, were translated into terms appropriate to adult romantic love. The translation centered on the three major styles of attachment in infancy--secure, avoidant, and anxious/ambivalent--and on the notion that continuity of relationship style is due in part to mental models (Bowlby's "inner working models") of self and social life. These models, and hence a person's attachment style, are seen as determined in part by childhood relationships with parents. Two questionnaire studies indicated that relative prevalence of the three attachment styles is roughly the same in adulthood as in infancy, the three kinds of adults differ predictably in the way they experience romantic love, and attachment style is related in theoretically meaningful ways to mental models of self and social relationships and to relationship experiences with parents. Implications for theories of romantic love are discussed, as are measurement problems and other issues related to future tests of the attachment perspective.

Full text

INTERPERSONAL
RELATIONS
AND
GROUP
PROCESSES
Romantic
Love
Conceptualized
as an
Attachment
Process
Cindy
Kazan
and
Phillip
Shaver
University
of
Denver
This
article explores
the
possibility that romantic
love
is an
attachment
process—a
biosocial
process
by
which
affectional
bonds
are
formed between adult lovers,
just
as
affectional
bonds
are
formed
earlier
in
life
between
human
infants
and
their parents.
Key
components
of
attachment theory,
developed
by
Bowlby,
Ainsworth,
and
others
to
explain
the
development
of
attectional
bonds
in
infancy,
were translated
into
terms appropriate
to
adult romantic love.
The
translation centered
on
the
three major styles
of
attachment
in
infancy—secure,
avoidant,
and
anxious/ambivalent—and
on
the
notion that continuity
of
relationship
style
is due in
part
to
mental models
(Bowlby's
"inner
working
models")
of
self
and
social
life.
These
models,
and
hence
a
person's
attachment
style,
are
seen
as
determined
in
part
by
childhood relationships
with
parents.
Two
questionnaire studies indi-
cated that
(a)
relative prevalence
of the
three attachment styles
is
roughly
the
same
in
adulthood
as
in
infancy,
(b) the
three kinds
of
adults
differ
predictably
in the way
they experience romantic
love,
and (c)
attachment style
is
related
in
theoretically
meaningful
ways
to
mental models
of
self
and
social
relationships
and to
relationship experiences
with
parents. Implications
for
theories
of
romantic
love
are
discussed,
as
are
measurement problems
and
other issues related
to
future
tests
of
the
attachment
perspective.
One of the
landmarks
of
contemporary
psychology
is
Bowl-
by's
(1969,
1973, 1980) three-volume exploration
of
attach-
ment,
separation,
and
loss,
the
processes
by
which
affectional
bonds
are
forged
and
broken.
Bowlby's
major
purpose
was to
describe
and
explain
how
infants become emotionally attached
to
their primary
caregivers
and
emotionally distressed
when
separated
from
them, although
he
also contended that
"attach-
ment
behavior [characterizes] human beings
from
the
cradle
to the
grave"
(1979,
p.
129).
In
recent years,
laboratory
and
naturalistic studies
of
infants
and
children (summarized
by
Bretherton,
1985,
and
Maccoby, 1980) have provided consider-
able
support
for
attachment theory, which
was
proposed
by
Bowlby
and
elaborated
by
several other investigators.
The
pur-
pose
of
this
article
is to
explore
the
possibility that this theory,
designed primarily with
infants
in
mind,
offers
a
valuable per-
spective
on
adult romantic love.
We
will
suggest that romantic
love
is an
attachment
process
(a
process
of
becoming attached),
We
are
grateful
to
Donna
Bradshaw
for
sharing
her
expertise
in the
areas
of
attachment theory
and
research,
to
Marty Meitus
for
allowing
us
to
conduct Study
1 in the
Rocky Mountain
News,
to
Kalhy
Purcell
for
keypunching,
to
Rick
Canfield
for
assistance
in all
phases
of the
project,
and to
Mary
Ainsworth,
John
Bowlby,
Harry Gollob,
Lee
Kirk-
patrick,
Roger
Kobak,
Anne Peplau, Harry
Reis,
Judith
Schwartz,
Ar-
lene
Skolnick,
and
Robert
Sternberg
for
helpful
comments
on
conven-
tion
presentations
and
earlier
drafts
of
this
article.
Correspondence concerning this article should
be
addressed
to
Cindy
Hazan
or to
Phillip
Shaver,
Department
of
Psychology, University
of
Denver,
Denver,
Colorado
80208-0204.
experienced somewhat
differently
by
different
people because
of
variations
in
their attachment histories.
For our
purpose, which
is to
create
a
coherent
framework
for
understanding love, loneliness,
and
grief
at
different
points
in
the
life
cycle, attachment theory
has
several advantages over
ex-
isting approaches
to
love
(Shaver,
Hazan,
&
Bradshaw,
in
press).
First, although
many
researchers (e.g., Rubin,
1973;
Hatfield
&
Sprecher,
1985)
have
attempted
to
assess
love with
unidimen-
sional
scales,
love appears
to
take multiple
forms
(e.g., Dion
&
Dion, 1985;
Hendrick
&
Hendrick,
1986; Lee, 1973;
Steck,
Levitan,
McLane,
&
Kelley,
1982; Sternberg, 1986;
Tennov,
1979).
Attachment theory explains
how at
least some
of
these
forms
develop
and how the
same underlying dynamics, com-
mon
to all
people,
can be
shaped
by
social experience
to
pro-
duce
different
relationship styles. Second, although various
au-
thors have portrayed certain
forms
of
love
as
healthy
and
others
as
unhealthy,
or at
least problematic (e.g., Hindy
&
Schwarz,
1984;
Tennov,
1979),
they have
not
said
how the
healthy
and
unhealthy
forms
fit
together
in a
single conceptual
framework.
Attachment theory
not
only provides such
a
framework,
but
it
also explains
how
both healthy
and
unhealthy
forms
of
love
originate
as
reasonable
adaptations
to
specific
social
circum-
stances.
The
portrait
of
love
offered
by
attachment theory
in-
cludes
negative
as
well
as
positive emotions:
for
example,
fear
of
intimacy (discussed
by
Hatfield, 1984), jealousy (e.g., Hindy
&
Schwarz,
1985),
and
emotional
ups and
downs
(Tennov,
1979)
as
well
as
caring (Rubin, 1973), intimacy
(Sternberg,
1986),
and
trust (Dion
&
Dion, 1985). Third, attachment the-
ory
deals
with
separation
and
loss
and
helps explain
how
loneli-
ness
and
love
are
related (Shaver
&
Rubenstein,
1980;
Parkes
&
Journal
of
Personality
and
Social
Psychology.
1987.
Vol.
52, No.
3,511-524
Copyrwht
1987
by
the
American
Psychological
Association,
Inc.
0022-3514/87/S00.75
511

512
CINDY
KAZAN
AND
PHILLIP
SHAVER
Weiss,
1983;
Weiss,
1973).
Finally, attachment theory links
adult
love with
socioemotional
processes evident
in
children
and
nonhuman
primates;
it
places
love
within
an
evolutionary
context (Wilson,
1981).
(See Steinberg
&
Barnes,
in
press,
for
an
anthology
of
recent approaches
to the
study
of
adult
love.)
Attachment
Theory
and
Research
Bowlby's
attachment theory
grew
out of
observations
of the
behavior
of
infants
and
young
children
who
were separated
from
their primary
caregiver
(usually
the
mother)
for
various
lengths
of
time.
Bowlby
noticed what primate researchers
had
also
observed
in the
laboratory
and the field:
When
a
human
or
primate
infant
is
separated
from
its
mother,
the
infant
goes
through
a
predictable series
of
emotional
reactions.
The first is
protest,
which involves
crying,
active searching,
and
resistance
to
others' soothing
efforts.
The
second
is
despair,
which
is a
state
of
passivity
and
obvious sadness.
And the
third, discussed only
with
reference
to
humans,
is
detachment,
an
active,
seemingly
defensive
disregard
for and
avoidance
of the
mother
if she re-
turns.
Because
of the
remarkable similarities between human
infants
and
other primate
infants,
Bowlby
was led to
consider
the
evolutionary
significance
of
infant-caregiver
attachment
and
its
maintenance
in the
face
of
separation.
The
attachment system,
as
Bowlby
called
the
complex con-
stellation
of
attachment
feelings
and
behaviors, seems
to
have
evolved
to
protect
infants
from
danger
by
keeping them close
to the
mother.
When
very
young,
a
human
infant
can do
little
more than cry, make
eye
contact, smile,
and
snuggle
in to en-
courage
its
mother
to
keep
it
near. Once mobile,
however,
it can
actively
pursue
its
mother
and
vocalize
to
her.
Bowlby
and
other
observers
of
both human
and
primate behavior
have
noticed
that
when
an
infant
is
healthy,
alert,
unafraid,
and in the
pres-
ence
of its
mother,
it
seems interested
in
exploring
and
master-
ing
the
environment
and in
establishing
affiliative
contact with
other
family
and
community
members. Researchers call
this
us-
ing
the
mother
as a
secure base.
Attachment theory
can be
summarized
in
three propositions,
phrased
clearly
in the
second
volume
of
Bowlby's
trilogy:
The first
[proposition]
is
that
when
an
individual
is
confident
that
an
attachment
figure
will
be
available
to him
whenever
he
desires
it,
that
person
will
be
much
less
prone
to
either
intense
or
chronic
fear
than
will
an
individual
who for any
reason
has no
such
confi-
dence.
The
second
proposition
concerns
the
sensitive
period
during
which
such
confidence
develops.
It
postulates
that
confidence
in
the
availability
of
attachment
figures, or
lack
of
it, is
built
up
slowly
during
the
years
of
immaturity—infancy,
childhood,
and
adoles-
cence—and
that
whatever
expectations
are
developed
during
those
years
tend
to
persist
relatively
unchanged
throughout
the
rest
of
life.
The
third
proposition
concerns
the
role
of
actual
experience.
It
postulates
that
the
varied
expectations
of the
accessibility
and
responsiveness
of
attachment
figures
that
individuals
develop
dur-
ing the
years
of
immaturity
are
tolerably
accurate
reflections
of
the
experiences
those
individuals
have
actually
had.
(Bowlby,
1973,
p.
235)
The
formation
during
early
childhood
of a
smoothly
func-
tioning
(i.e., secure) attachment relationship with
a
primary
caregiver,
although
the
norm
in our
society,
is by no
means
guaranteed. Research
by
Ainsworth
and
others suggests that
a
mother's sensitivity
and
responsiveness
to her
infant's
signals
and
needs
during
the first
year
of
life
are
important prerequi-
sites.
Mothers
who are
slow
or
inconsistent
in
responding
to
their infant's cries
or who
regularly intrude
on or
interfere with
their
infant's
desired activities (sometimes
to
force
affection
on
the
infant
at a
particular moment) produce
infants
who cry
more
than usual, explore less than usual
(even
in the
mother's
presence), mingle attachment behaviors
with
overt expressions
of
anger,
and
seem generally anxious.
If,
instead,
the
mother
consistently
rebuffs
or
rejects
the
infant's attempts
to
establish
physical
contact,
the
infant
may
learn
to
avoid her.
On the
basis
of
their observations, Ainsworth,
Blehar.
Waters,
and
Wall
(1978)
delineated three styles
or
types
of
attachment,
often
called
secure,
anxious/ambivalent,
and
avoidant.
Infants
in the
anxious/ambivalent category
frequently
exhibit
the
behaviors
Bowlby
called
protest,
and the
avoidant
infants
frequently
ex-
hibit
the
behaviors
he
called
detachment.
A
major
goal
of
this
article
is to
apply this three-category system
to the
study
of ro-
mantic
love.
In
their description
of the
three attachment styles,
Ainsworth
et
al.
(1978)
referred
to
infants' expectations concerning their
mothers'
accessibility
and
responsiveness. This
fits
with
Bowl-
by's claim
that
infants
and
children construct inner
working
models
of
themselves
and
their
major
social-interaction
part-
ners. Because
the
expectations incorporated
in
these models
are
some
of the
most important sources
of
continuity between
early
and
later
feelings
and
behaviors, they deserve special
attention.
According
to
Bowlby,
working models (which
we
will also call
mental
models)
and the
behavior patterns
influenced
by
them
are
central components
of
personality.
The
claim
of
cross-situa-
tional
and
cross-age continuity
is
still controversial
but is
sup-
ported
by a
growing list
of
longitudinal studies
from
infancy
through
the
early elementary school years
(Dontas,
Maratos,
Fafoutis,
&
Karangelis,
1985;
Erickson,
Sroufe,
&
Egeland,
1985;
Main, Kaplan,
&
Cassidy, 1985;
Sroufe,
1983; Waters,
Wippman,
&
Sroufe,
1979).
This evidence
for
continuity adds
plausibility
to the
notion that
a
person's
adult style
of
romantic
attachment
is
also
affected
by
attachment history.
Continuity,
according
to
Bowlby
(1973),
is due
primarily
to
the
persistence
of
interrelated mental models
of
self
and
social
life
in the
context
of a
fairly
stable
family
setting:
Confidence
that
an
attachment
figure
is,
apart
from
being
accessi-
ble,
likely
to be
responsive
can be
seen
to
turn
on at
least
two
vari-
ables:
(a)
whether
or not the
attachment
figure is
judged
to be the
sort
of
person
who in
general
responds
to
calls
for
support
and
pro-
tection;
[and)
(b)
whether
or not the
self
is
judged
to be the
sort
of
person
towards
whom
anyone,
and the
attachment
figure in
partic-
ular,
is
likely
to
respond
in a
helpful
way.
Logically
these
variables
are
independent.
In
practice
they
are apt to be
confounded.
As a
result,
the
model
of the
attachment
figure and the
model
of the
self
are
likely
to
develop
so as to be
complementary
and
mutually
confirming.
(Bowlby,
1973,
p.
238)
Love
as
Attachment
So
far,
no one
hastittempted
to
conceptualize
the
entire range
of
romantic
love
experiences
in a way
that
parallels
the
typology
developed
by
Ainsworth
and her
colleagues.
Nor has
anyone
with
an
interest
in
romantic relationships pursued
Bowlby's
idea that continuity
in
relationship style
is a
matter
of
mental
models
of
self
and
social
life.
Finally,
no one has
explored
the

LOVE
CONCEPTUALIZED
AS AN
ATTACHMENT PROCESS
513
possibility that
the
specific
characteristics
of
parent-child
rela-
tionships
identified
by
Ainsworth
et
al.
as the
probable
causes
of
differences
in
infant
attachment styles
are
also among
the
determinants
of
adults' romantic attachment styles. These
are
the
major
aims
of
this article.
We
derived
the
following
hypotheses
by
applying
Bowlby's
and
Ainsworth's
ideas
and findings as
literally
as
possible
to the
domain
of
adult love.
Hypothesis
1
Given
the
descriptions
of the
secure,
avoidant,
and
anxious/
ambivalent
styles,
we
expected roughly
60% of
adults
to
classify
themselves
as
secure
and the
remainder
to
split
fairly
evenly
between
the two
insecure types, with perhaps
a
few
more
in the
avoidant
than
in the
anxious/ambivalent category.
In a
sum-
mary
of
American
studies
of
the
three types
of
infants,
Campos,
Barrett,
Lamb, Goldsmith,
and
Stenberg
(1983) concluded
that
62%
are
secure,
23% are
avoidant,
and
15%
are
anxious/ambiv-
alent.
Given
a
diverse sample
of
American adults,
we
thought
it
reasonable
to
expect approximately
the
same proportions.
Hypothesis
2
Just
as the
feelings
an
infant
presumably experiences
in the
relationship
with
his or her
mother
are
thought
to
reflect
the
quality
of
attachment
to
her,
we
expected that
different
types
of
respondents—secure,
avoidant,
and
anxious/ambivalent—
would
experience their most important
love
relationships
differently.
We
predicted that
the
most important
love
experi-
ence
of a
secure
adult
would
be
characterized
by
trust,
friend-
ship,
and
positive emotions.
For
avoidant adults,
love
was ex-
pected
to be
marked
by
fear
of
closeness
and
lack
of
trust. Anx-
ious/ambivalent
adults
were
expected
to
experience
love
as a
preoccupying,
almost
painfully
exciting struggle
to
merge with
another person. This last
style
is
similar
to
what
Hindy
and
Schwarz
(1984)
called anxious romantic attachment
and
Ten-
nov
(1979)
called
limerence.
Hypothesis
3
Respondents'
working
models
of
self
and
relationships were
also expected
to
differ
according
to
attachment style. Secure
types
should
believe
in
enduring love, generally
find
others
trustworthy,
and
have
confidence
that
the
self
is
likable.
Avoid-
ant
types should
be
more
doubtful
of the
existence
or
durability
of
romantic
love
and
believe
that
they
do not
need
a
love
partner
in
order
to be
happy. Anxious/ambivalent types should
fall
in
love
frequently
and
easily
but
have
difficulty
finding
true love.
They
should also
have
more
serf-doubts
than
the
other
two
types
because,
unlike
avoidant respondents, they
do not
repress
or
attempt
to
hide
feelings
of
insecurity.
Hypothesis
4
Because
attachment style
is
thought
to
develop
in
infancy
and
childhood,
we
expected respondents
of
the
three types
to
report
different
attachment histories. According
to the
theory, secure
respondents should remember their mothers
as
dependably
re-
sponsive
and
caring; avoidant respondents should report that
their
mothers were generally cold
and
rejecting;
and
anxious/
ambivalent
respondents should remember
a
mixture
of
positive
and
negative experiences
with
their
mothers.
As
less research
has
been conducted
with
fathers,
we
tentatively expected
the
findings
related
to
them
to be
roughly
similar
to the findings for
mothers.
Hypothesis
5
Finally,
because
the
attachment needs
of
insecure respon-
dents
are
unlikely
to be
fully
met, avoidant
and
anxious/ambiv-
alent respondents should
be
especially vulnerable
to
loneliness.
The
avoidant types,
however,
may
defend
against
or
attempt
to
hide
this
vulnerable
feeling
and so
report less loneliness than
anxious/ambivalent respondents
do.
Study
1
In
an
initial
effort
to
test
the
attachment-theory approach
to
romantic love,
we
designed
a
"love
quiz"
to be
printed
in a
local
newspaper.
As
explained
by
Shaver
and
Rubenstein
(1983),
the
newspaper
questionnaire method
has
been used
in a
wide vari-
ety
of
studies,
always
with
results that approximate those
from
more
expensive, more strictly representative
surveys.
The
main
difference
between newspaper
survey
respondents
and
partici-
pants
in
representative sample surveys
is
that
the
former
have
slightly
higher education levels. Also, depending
on the
topic,
newspaper
surveys tend
to
draw
more
female
than male respon-
dents. Neither
of
these biases seemed
to
preclude
a
valuable ini-
tial
test
of our
ideas,
and the
gains
in
sample size
and
heteroge-
neity
appeared
to
outweigh
the
cost
of
mild unrepresentative-
ness.
A
single-item measure
of the
three attachment styles
was de-
signed
by
translating Ainsworth
et
al.'s
(1978)
descriptions
of
infants
into terms appropriate
to
adult
love.
The
love-experi-
ence
questionnaire,
which
we
will
describe
in
detail,
was
based
on
previous adult-love measures
and
extrapolations
from
the
literature
on
infant-caregiver
attachment.
The
measure
of
working
models
was
based
on the
assumption
that
conscious
beliefs
about romantic
love—concerning,
for
example, whether
it
lasts
forever
and
whether
it is
easy
or
difficult
to find—are
colored
by
underlying,
and
perhaps
not
fully
conscious, mental
models.
The
measure
of
attachment history
was a
simple
adjec-
tive
checklist
used
to
describe childhood relationships with par-
ents
and the
parents' relationship with each other.
Method
Subjects.
Analyses
reported
here
are
based
on the first 620 of
over
1,200 replies received within
a
week
following
publication
of the
ques-
tionnaire.
(The
major
findings
were
stable
after
the first few
hundred,
so
additional
replies were
not
keypunched.)
Of
these
620
replies,
205
were
from
men and 415
were
from
women.
The
subjects ranged
in age
from
14 to 82,
with
a
median
age of 34 and a
mean
of 36.
Average
household income
was
$20,000
to
$30,000;
average education level
was
"some
college."
Just over
half
(51%)
were
Protestant,
22%
were Catholic,
3%
were Jewish,
10%
were
atheist
or
agnostic,
and 13%
were
"other."
Ninety-one
percent were "primarily
heterosexual,"
4%
were "primarily
homosexual,"
and 2%
were "primarily bisexual"
(3%
chose
not to an-
swer). Forty-two percent were married
at the
time
of the
survey;
28%

514
CINDY
KAZAN
AND
PHILLIP
SHAVER
were
divorced
or
widowed,
9%
were "living
with
a
lover,"
and
31%
were
dating. (Some
checked
more than
one
category.)
Measures
and
procedure.
The
questionnaire appeared
in the
July
26,
1985,
issue
of the
Rocky
Mountain
News
on the first and
second pages
of
the
Lifestyles
section.
Besides being highly visible there,
it was re-
ferred
to in a
banner headline
at the top of the
paper's
front
page: "Tell
us
about
the
love
of
your
life;
experts
ask 95 questions
about
your
most
important romance."
The
instructions included
the
following
sen-
tences:
"The
questionnaire
is
designed
to
look
at the
most important
love
relationship
you
have
ever had,
why you got
involved
in it, and why
it
turned
out the way it
did....
It may be a
past
or a
current relation-
ship,
but
choose
only
the
most
important
one."
Given
that
there
was
only
enough room
to ask
about
one
relationship,
we
decided
to
have
subjects
focus
on the one
they
considered most important.
The
questionnaire
was
divided into three
parts.
The first
contained
56
statements concerning
the
subject's most important
relationship,
for
example,
"I
(considered/consider)
one of my
best friends"
and
"I
(loved/love)
so
much that
1
often
(felt/feel)
jealous."
(The
blank
referred to the
most important lover's name.) Responses were
recorded
by
circling
SD, D, A, or SA to
indicate points along
a
strongly
disagreeio
strongly
agree
continuum.
The 56
statements,
4
each
for 14
a
priori
subscales,
were adapted
from
previous
love
questionnaires
(Dion
&
Dion,
1985;
Hatfield
&
Sprecher,
1985;
Hindy
&
Schwarz,
1984;
Lasswell
&
Lobsenz,
1980;
Rubin,
1973;
Steffen,
McLaney,
&
Hustedt,
1984)
or
suggested
by the
literature
on
infant-caretaker attach-
ment
(e.g.,
Ainsworth
et
al.,
1978).
A
principal-components
analysis
followed
by
equimax
rotation
was
performed
on the
56-item
measure.
Thirteen
factors
had
eigenvalues
greater than
1.0,
and 12
corresponded
to a
priori
scales.
Items loading
above
.40 on 1 of the
12
predicted
factors
were
analyzed
for
reliability,
and
items
that reduced
coefficient
alpha
were
deleted. Table
1
provides
the
names
of the
12
scales
and a
sample item,
the
number
of
items
retained, and
coefficient
alpha
for
each. Alpha ranged
from
.64 to .84
with
a
mean
of
.76,
which
seemed adequate
for
preliminary tests
of the
hypotheses.
Part
2 of the
questionnaire asked
whether
the
described
relationship
was
current
or
past
(61%
were current,
39%
were
past), what
the
sub-
ject's
relationship
to
that person
was at the
time
of
the
survey,
how
long
the
relationship
had
lasted,
how
many
times
the
subject
had
been
in
love,
and
whether
he or she had
experienced
crushes
before
age
10.
This
part
of the
questionnaire
also
contained demographic questions.
Part
3
dealt with attachment
style
and
attachment history.
It
included
sections dealing with
the
subject's childhood
relationships
with
his or
her
mother
and
father
and the
parents' relationship with each other (the
specific
items
will
be
discussed more
fully
in the
Results
and
Discussion
section).
Also
included
were
questions concerning
how the
subject typi-
cally
felt
in
relationships
(the
exact wording appears
in
Table
2) and
what
he or she
believed concerning
the
typical course
of
romantic
love.
The
questionnaire concluded with
the
open-ended
question
"Can
you
add
anything that
might
help
us
understand romantic love?"
and a re-
quest
for the
subject's name
and
phone number
if he or she was
willing
to
be
interviewed.
(Over
60%
of
the
subjects provided this information.)
Subjects
were
asked
to
mail their reply
forms
to the
Rocky
Mountain
News
within
a
week.
Results
and
Discussion
Frequencies
of
the
three
attachment
styles.
Hypothesis
1
con-
cerned whether newspaper readers could meaningfully
classify
themselves
as
avoidant,
anxious/ambivalent,
or
secure
in
their
most
important romantic relationship,
given
fairly
simple
de-
scriptions
of the
three attachment
styles,
and in
particular
whether
the
frequencies
of the
types
would
be
similar
to
those
found
in
studies
of
infants
and
young
children.
Table
2
shows
Table
1
Information
on
Love-Experience
Scales
Scale
name
Sample item
No.
of
items
Happiness
Friendship
Trust
Fear
of
closeness
Acceptance
Emotional
extremes
Jealousy
Obsessive
preoccupation
Sexual
attraction
Desire
for
union
Desire
for
reciprocation
Love
at first
sight
My
relationship
with
(made/makes)
me
very
happy.
I
(considered/consider)
one of my
best
friends.
I
(felt/feel)
complete
trust
in
I
sometimes
(felt/feel)
that
getting
too
close
to
_
could mean trouble.
I
(was/am)
well
aware
of
's
imperfections
but
it
(did/does)
not
lessen
my
love.
I
(felt/feel)
almost
as
much
pain
as joy in my
relationship with
.
I
(loved/love)
so
much
that
I
often
(felt/
feel)
jealous.
Sometimes
my
thoughts
(were/are) uncontrollably
I
(was/am)
very
physically
attracted
to .
Sometimes
I
(wished/wish)
that
and
I
were
a
single
unit,
a
"we"
without
clear
boundaries.
More than
anything,
I
(wanted/want)
to
return
my
feelings.
Once
I
noticed
, I was
hooked.
.84
.78
.83
.64
.67
.81
.82
.70
.80
.79
.70
.70
how
the
alternatives were worded
and
provides
the
percentage
of
subjects endorsing each description.
Just
over
half
(56%)
classified
themselves
as
secure, whereas
the
other
half
split
fairly
evenly
between
the
avoidant
and
anx-
ious/ambivalent categories (25%
and
19%,
respectively). These
figures are
similar
to
proportions
reported
in
American studies
of
infant-mother attachment (Campos
et
al.,
1983, summa-
rized
the
proportions obtained
in
these studies
as 62%
secure,
23%
avoidant,
and
15%
anxious/ambivalent).
Our
results sug-
gest,
but of
course
do not
prove, that subjects' choices among
the
alternatives
were
nonrandom
and may
have
been deter-
mined
by
some
of
the
same kinds
offerees
that
affect
the
attach-
ment
styles
of
infants
and
children.
The
remainder
of the
results
argue
for the
validity
of
subjects'
self-classifications.
Differences
in
love
experiences.
The
second hypothesis pre-
dicted that subjects
with
different
self-designated
attachment
styles would
differ
in the way
they
characterized
their
most
im-
portant
love
relationship. Table
3
presents
the
mean
subscale
scores
(each
with
a
possible
range
of 1 to 4)
for
each attachment
type,
along
with
the F
ratio
from
a
one-way
analysis
of
variance
(ANOVA)
on
scores
for
each subscale.
In
line with
the
hypothesis, secure lovers
described
their most

LOVE
CONCEPTUALIZED
AS AN
ATTACHMENT
PROCESS
515
Table
2
Adult
Attachment
Types
and
Their
Frequencies
(Newspaper
Sample)
Question:
Which
of the
following
best
describes
your
feelings?
Answers
and
percentages:
Secure
(N
=
319,56%):
1 find it relatively
easy
to get
close
to
others
and am
comfortable
depending
on
them
and
having
them
depend
on
me.
I
don't
often
worry
about
being
abandoned
or
about
someone
getting
too
close
to me.
Atoidant
(N =
145,
25%):
I am
somewhat
uncomfortable
being
close
to
others;
I find it
difficult
to
trust
them
completely,
difficult
to
allow
myself
to
depend
on
them.
I am
nervous
when
anyone
gets
too
close,
and
often,
love
partners
want
me to be
more
intimate
than
I
feel
comfortable
being.
Anxious/Ambivalent
(N=
110,19%):
I
find
that
others
are
reluctant
to get as
close
as I
would
like.
I
often
worry
that
my
partner
doesn't
really
love
me or
won't
want
to
stay
with
me. 1
want
to
merge
completely
with
another
person,
and
this
desire
sometimes
scares
people
away.
Note.
Twenty-one
subjects
failed
to
answer
this
question,
and 25
checked
more
than
one
answer
alternative.
important
love
experience
as
especially
happy,
friendly,
and
trusting.
They emphasized
being
able
to
accept
and
support
their
partner despite
the
partner's
faults.
Moreover, their rela-
tionships tended
to
endure longer: 10.02 years,
on the
average,
compared with 4.86 years
for the
anxious/ambivalent subjects
and
5.97 years
for the
avoidant
subjects, F(2, 568)
=
15.89,
p
<
.001.
This
was the
case even though members
of all
three
groups
were
36
years
old on the
average.
Only
6% of the
secure
group
had
been divorced, compared with
10%
of the
anxious/
ambivalent
group
and 12% of the
avoidant group,
F(2,
573)
=
3.36,
p<.
05.
The
avoidant lovers
were
characterized
by
fear
of
intimacy,
emotional
highs
and
lows,
and
jealousy. They never produced
the
highest mean
on a
positive love-experience dimension.
The
anxious/ambivalent subjects experienced love
as
involving
ob-
session, desire
for
reciprocation
and
union, emotional
highs
and
lows,
and
extreme sexual attraction
and
jealousy. They pro-
vided
a
close
fit to
Tennov's
(1979)
description
oflimerence
and
Hindy
and
Schwarz's
(1984) conception
of
anxious romantic
attachment, suggesting that
the
difference
between what
Tennov
called love
and
limerence
is the
difference
between secure
and
anxious/ambivalent attachment.
Although
the
average love experiences
of
people
in the
three
different
attachment
categories
differed
significantly,
for
most
of
the
subscales
all
three types scored
on the
same side
of the
midpoint
(2.50), emotional extremes
and
jealousy being
the
only
exceptions. Thus, there appears
to be a
core experience
of
romantic
love
shared
by all
three types, with
differences
in
emphasis
and
patterning between
the
types.
The
results also
support
the
ideas that
love
is a
multidimensional phenomenon
and
that individuals
differ
in
more
ways
than
the
intensity
of
their
love
experiences. Especially noteworthy
was the
fact
that
the
ordering
of
means
for the
different
attachment styles
differed
for
different
dimensions.
For the
dimensions
of
happi-
ness,
friendship,
trust,
and
fear
of
closeness, secure subjects
differed
significantly
from
avoidant
and
anxious/ambivalent
subjects
but
these
two
insecure groups
did not
differ
from
each
other.
On the
dimensions
of
obsessive
preoccupation,
sexual
at-
traction, desire
for
union,
desire
for
reciprocation,
and
love
at
first
sight,
anxious/ambivalent subjects
differed
significantly
from
avoidant
and
secure
subjects,
who did not
differ
from
each
other.
On the
acceptance
dimension, avoidant subjects (the least
accepting)
differed
from
anxious/ambivalent
and
secure
sub-
jects,
and on
emotional extremes
and
jealousy,
all
three
groups
were
statistically
distinct.
This
variety
of
patterns
supports
the
claim
that
there
are
three
different
love
styles,
not
simply three
points along
a
love continuum.
Differences
in
mental
models.
We
attempted
to
assess what
Bowlby
(1969)
called working models
of
relationships
by
using
the
items shown
in
Table
4.
Each
was
either checked
or not
checked
as
describing
how the
subject
generally
"view[s]
the
course
of
romantic
love
over
time."
These
dichotomous
answers
were
analyzed
by
attachment style, using
a
one-way
ANOVA.
(Because
the
answers were
scored
as
either
0 or
1,
the
means
can
be
read
as
proportions.)
In
line
with
the
third hypothesis, secure lovers said that
ro-
mantic
feelings
wax and
wane
but at
times reach
the
intensity
experienced
at the
start
of the
relationship
and
that
in
some
relationships romantic
love
never
fades.
The
avoidant lovers
said
the
kind
of
head-over-heels romantic
love
depicted
in
novels
and
movies
does
not
exist
in
real
life,
romantic
love sel-
dom
lasts,
and it is
rare
to find a
person
one can
really
fall
in
love
with.
The
anxious/ambivalent subjects
claimed
that
it is
easy
to
fall
in
love
and
that
they
frequently
feel
themselves
be-
ginning
to
fall,
although (like
the
avoidant subjects) they rarely
find
what
they would call real love. Like
the
secure subjects,
the
anxious/ambivalent subjects
said
they believe
that
romantic
feelings
wax and
wane
over
the
course
of a
relationship.
Differences
in
attachment
history.
Attachment history
with
parents
was
assessed
in two
ways.
Subjects
were
asked whether
Table
3
Love-Subscale
Means
for
the
Three
Attachment
Types
(Newspaper
Sample)
Anxious/
Scale
name
Avoidant
ambivalent
Secure
F(2,571)
Happiness
Friendship
Trust
Fear
of
closeness
Acceptance
Emotional
extremes
Jealousy
Obsessive
preoccupation
Sexual
attraction
Desire
for
union
Desire
for
reciprocation
Love
at first
sight
3.19.
3.18.
3.11.
2.30.
2.86.
2.75.
2.57.
3.01.
3.27,
2.81.
3.24.
2.91.
3.31.
3.19.
3.13.
2.15.
3.03b
3.05b
2.88b
3.29b
3.43t
3.25b
3.55b
3.17b
3.5
lb
3.50,,
3.43b
1.88b
3.01b
2.36C
2.17C
3.01.
3.27.
2.69.
3.22.
2.97.
14.21***
22.96***
16.21***
22.65***
4.66"
27.54***
43.91***
9.47***
4.08*
22.67***
14.90***
6.00**
Note.
Within
each
row,
means
with
different
subscripts
differ
at the .05
level
of
significance
according
to a
Scheffe
test.
*p<.05.
"p<.01.
***;><
.001.

516
CINDY
KAZAN
AND
PHILLIP
SHAVER
Table
4
Proportion
of
Respondents
Who
Endorsed
Each
Mental-Model
Statement
About
Love
(Newspaper
Sample)
Statement
Anxious/
Avoidant
ambivalent
Secure
f\2,571)
1.
The
kind
of
head-over-
heels
romantic
love
depicted
in
novels
and
movies
doesn't
exist
in
real
life.
.25,
2.
Intense
romantic
love
is
common
at the
beginning
of
a
relationship,
but it
rarely
lasts
forever.
.41,
3.
Romantic
feelings
wax
and
wane
over
the
course
of a
relationship,
but at
times
they
can be as
intense
as
they
were
at
the
start.
.60,
4. In
some
relationships,
romantic
love
really
lasts;
it
doesn't
fade
with
time.
.41,
5.
Most
of
us
could
love
many
different
people
equally
well;
there
is
no
"one
true
love"
which
is
"meant
to
be."
.39
6.
It's
easy
to
fall
in
love.
I
feel
myself
beginning
to
fall
in
love
often.
.04,
7.
It's
rare
to find
someone
you can
really
fall
in
love
with.
.66,
.28.
.13b
8.81*"
.34b
.28b
3.83*
.75b
.79b
9.86***
.46,
.59b
7.48***
.36 .40
ns
.20,,
.09.
9.33***
.56,
.43b
11.61***
Note.
Within
each
row,
means
with
different
subscripts
differ
at the .05
level
of
significance
according
to a
Scheffe
test.
*p<.05.
**p<.0l.
***p<.OOI.
they
had
ever been
separated
from
either
parent
for
"what
seemed
like
a
long
time"
and
whether
the
parents ever separated
or
divorced. They
were
also asked
to
describe
how
each
parent
had
generally behaved toward them during childhood (using
37
adjectives,
such
as
responsive,
caring,
critical,
and
intrusive,
de-
rived
from
a
pilot study
in
which subjects answered open-ended
questions about their childhood relationships with parents)
and
the
parents'
relationship
with each other (using
12
similarly
de-
rived
adjectives
such
as
affectionate,
unhappy,
and
argumenta-
tive).
There
were
no
significant
differences
among
the
three attach-
ment
types
in
likelihood
or
duration
of
separation
from
parents
during
childhood,
even
when
analyzed
by
reason
for
separation.
In
addition,
parental divorce seemed unrelated
to
attachment
type, even
though
quality
of
relationships with parents
was
as-
sociated with type.
The
best predictors
of
adult attachment type
were
respondents' perceptions
of the
quality
of
their relation-
ship
with
each parent
and the
parents' relationship with each
other.
A
one-way
ANOVA,
with attachment style
as the
independent
variable,
on
each
of the 86
child-parent
and
parent-parent
re-
lationship variables yielded
51
Fs
that were significant
at the
.05
level,
clearly more than expected
by
chance.
(Thirty-seven
of
these
were significant
at the .01
level;
15
were significant
at
the
.001
level.)
Because
many
of the
variables
were
correlated,
which
meant that
many
of the
ANOVA
results
were redundant,
a
hierarchical discriminant-function analysis
was
performed
to
assess predictability
of
membership
in the
three attachment
categories
from
a
combination
of
attachment-history
variables.
Subjects
with
no
missing data
on the
variables involved
(N =
506) were included
in the
analysis.
The 22
attachment-history
variables
shown
in
Table
5
(plus
one
with
a
correlation
below
.20)
were retained
as
significant predictors
of
attachment type.
Both
discriminant functions (two being
the
maximum
possible
number
given
three target groups) were
statistically
significant,
with
a
combined
X2(46,
N =
506)
=
131.16,
p <
.001.
After
removal
of the first
function,
x2(22,
N =
506)
was
40.94
(p <
.01).
The two
functions
accounted
for
69.87%
and
30.13%,
re-
spectively,
of the
between-groups
variability.
As
shown
in
Figure
1,
the first
discriminant
function
sepa-
rated secure subjects
from
the two
kinds
of
insecure subjects.
The
second
function
separated
avoidant
from
anxious/ambiva-
lent subjects.
Together,
the two
functions
correctly classified
56%
of the
avoidant subjects,
51%
of the
anxious/ambivalent
subjects,
and 58% of the
secure subjects. (The incorrectly classi-
fied
subjects
were
distributed
fairly
evenly
across
the
remaining
categories.)
Correlations
of the 22
predictor variables with
the two
dis-
Table
5
Significant
Correlations
Between
Attachment-History
Variables
and
Discriminant
Functions
(Newspaper
Sample)
Variable
Affectionate
parental
relationship
Respectful
mother
Intrusive
mother
Caring
father
Demanding
mother
Loving
father
Humorous
father
Confident
mother
Unhappy
parental
relationship
Accepting
mother
Caring
parental
relationship
Responsible
mother
Affectionate
father
Sympathetic
father
Strong
mother
Disinterested
mother
Unresponsive
father
Unfair
father
Humorous
mother
Likable
mother
Respected
mother
Rejecting
mother
Function
1
.44*
.43*
-.42*
.41*
-.40*
.40*
.40*
.35*
-.34*
.33*
.32*
.31*
.30*
.28*
.28*
-.28*
-.24*
-.20
.30
-.27
Function
2
.22
.25
.24
.26
.47*
.43*
.38*
.37*
-.30*
Note.
Correlations
marked
with
an
asterisk
in the first
column
corre-
lated
more
highly
with
Function
1
than
with
Function
2; the
reverse
is
true
in the
second
column.

LOVE
CONCEPTUALIZED
AS AN
ATTACHMENT
PROCESS
517
_o
1
I
Anxious/Am
bivalent
Secure
Avoldant
-.6 -.4 -.2
.2
.4
First
discriminant
function
Figure
1.
Plot
of
three group
centroids
on two
discriminant functions
derived
from
attachment-history variables (newspaper sample).
criminant
functions
are
shown
in
Table
5.
The
best
discrimina-
tors
between
secure
and
insecure
subjects
included
(a) a
rela-
tionship
between
parents
that
was
affectionate
(r =
.44),
caring
(.32),
and not
unhappy
(-.34);
(b) a
mother
who was
respectful
of
the
subject
(.43),
confident
(.35),
accepting
(.33),
responsible
(.31),
not
intrusive
(-.42),
and not
demanding
(-.40),
among
other
qualities;
and (c) a
father
who
was,
among
other
things,
caring
(.41),
loving
(.40),
humorous
(.40),
and
affectionate
(.30).
The top
discriminators
between
avoidant
and
anxious/ambiva-
lent
groups,
with
positively
correlated
variables
being
those
named
more
frequently
by
anxious/ambivalent
subjects,
in-
cluded
(a) no
parental
relationship
variables;
(b) a
mother
who
was
relatively
humorous
(.43),
likable
(.38),
respected
(.37),
and
not
rejecting
(-.30);
and (c) a
father
who was
relatively
un-
fair
(.47).
These
results
can be
summarized
by
saying
that
secure
sub-
jects,
in
comparison
with
insecure
subjects,
reported
warmer
relationships
with
both
parents
and
between
their
two
parents.
Avoidant
subjects,
in
comparison
with
anxious/ambivalent
subjects,
described
their
mothers
as
cold
and
rejecting.
Anx-
ious/ambivalent
subjects
saw
their
fathers
as
unfair.
Both
sets
of
correlations
are
compatible
with
expectations
based
on
Ains-
worth
et
al.'s
(1978)
studies
of
infant-caregiver
attachment.
Sex
differences
and
similarities.
There
were
a
few
significant
sex
differences
on
individual
items.
Most
notably,
respondents
tended
to
describe
their
opposite-sex
parent
more
favorably
than
their
same-sex
parent.
For
example,
62%
of
the
women
(vs.
44%
of the
men)
described
their
fathers
as
loving,
f(563)
=
4.16,
p
<
.001,
and 78% of the men
(vs.
69% of the
women)
described
their
mothers
as
loving,
t(614)
=
2.36,
p <
.05.
This
same
pat-
tern
was
found
for the
adjectives
affectionate
and
understand-
ing.
Moreover,
on
negative
trait
dimensions,
respondents
tended
to
judge
their
same-sex
parent
more
harshly.
For
instance,
39%
of
the
women,
but
only
27%
of
the
men,
described
their
mothers
as
critical,
/(614)
=
2.91,
p <
.01.
When
reporting
about
their
fathers,
on the
other
hand,
53% of the men
chose
critical,
com-
pared
with
39% of the
women,
/(563)
=
3.06,
p <
.01.
The
same
was
true
for
demanding.
There
were
no
significant
sex
differ-
ences
in
prevalence
of the
three
attachment
styles
and
only
small
differences
on two of the
love
dimensions:
Men
agreed
slightly
more
than
women
did
with
the
sexual-attraction
items
(3.35
vs.
3.26),
r(618)
=
1.99,.p
<
.05,
and
also
reported
greater
desire
for
union
(2.94
vs.
2.78),
1(616)
-
2.45,
p <
.05.
Overall,
what
stood
out was the
marked
similarity
of the
results
for men
and
women.
Study
2
Method
Study
1
suffered
from
several limitations that made
it
desirable
to
conduct
a
conceptual replication. First,
the
newspaper sample might
have
been biased because
of
self-selection. This could
have
affected
our
estimate
of the
prevalence
of
each
of the
three attachment types
and
distorted
other results
in
unanticipated
and
undetectable
ways.
It
seemed
wise,
therefore,
to
test
a
non-self-selected
college-student
group
in
our
second study, students being
the
usual subjects
in
social
psycho-
logical
research.
Second,
Study
I
examined
only
limited aspects
of
sub-
jects'
mental models.
An
interesting part
of
Bowlby's
(1969)
analysis
was
the
claim that these models
involve
complementary portrayals
of
self
and relationships. In
Study
1,
because
of
space limitations imposed
by
newspaper
editors,
we
neglected
the
self side
of
subjects' mental
models;
in
Study
2 we
focused
on
them. Third, because previous
re-
search
on
loneliness
(e.g.,
Rubenstein
&
Shaver,
1982)
has
linked loneli-
ness
to
attachment history without using
the
attachment-classification
item designed
for our research on
romantic
love,
we
decided
to
include
in
Study
2
brief measures
of
state
and
trait
loneliness
(Shaver,
Furman,
&
Buhrmester,
1985).
The
hypotheses
were
the
same
as
in
Study
l.but
Hypotheses
4 and 5
were especially important
in
Study
2
because
new
self-model
items
and
measures
of
loneliness
were
included.
Subjects.
One
hundred eight undergraduates
(38 men and 70
women)
who
were
enrolled
in a
course
entitled Understanding Human
Conflict
completed
the
questionnaire
as a
class exercise. Approximately three
fourths
of the
students
were
first-quarter
freshmen;
the
mean
age was
18
years.
Measures
and
procedure.
As in
Study
1,
subjects
were
asked
to
de-
scribe their most important
love
relationship in
terms
of 56
agree-dis-
agree
items. They also classified themselves
by
using
the
same attach-
ment-style
item.
To
measure additional
aspects
of
subjects' mental
models,
we
included several
self-descriptive
items
and
some
new
items
concerning
relationships
with other people (see Table
8).
State
and
trait
loneliness
were
measured
(in a
separate questionnaire
to be
described)
with
two
parallel
11-item
scales similar
to
those described
by
Shaver
et
al.
(1985). These
were
based
in
part
on the revised
UCLA Loneliness
Scale
(Russell,
Peplau,
&
Cutrona,
1980).
Each item
was
answered
on
a
5-point
response scale; trait items
referred to
feelings
experienced
"during
the
past
few
years"
and
state items
referred to
"the
past
few
weeks." Sample
trait
items included "During
the
past
few
years,
I
have
lacked
companionship"
and
"During
the
past
few
years, about
how of-
ten
have
you
felt
lonely?"
Subjects
received
their
questionnaires
as
part
of a
series
of
class exer-
cises
due at
different
points during
the
quarter. Each exercise
was due a
week
before
related issues
were
discussed
in
class.
Confidentiality
was
assured
by
checking
off
the
names
of
students
who
handed
in the
exer-
cise
on
time
and
then analyzing
all
data
by
number
rather
than
by
name.

518
CINDY
HAZAN
AND
PHILLIP
SHAVER
Table
6
Love-Subscale
Means
for
the
Three
Attachment
Types
(Undergraduate
Sample)
Scale
name
Happiness
Friendship
Trust
Fear
of
closeness
Acceptance
Emotional
extremes
Jealousy
Obsessive
preoccupation
Sexual
attraction
Desire
for
union
Desire
for
reciprocation
Love
at first
sight
Avoidant
3.06
3.34.
3.25.
2.63.
2.96
2.79.
2.52.
3.03
3.05
2.83.
3.21.
2.67.
Anxious/
ambivalent
3.26
3.39.
3.35b
2.45.
3.11
2.86.
3.26b
3.09
3.31
3.29b
3.64b
3.10,,
Secure
3.30
3.61b
3.57b
2.13b
2.91
2.33b
2.40.
3.09
3.23
2.92.
3.18.
2.83.
f\2,
104)
ns
3.30"
3.03*
4.48*'
ns
4.67**
13.24***
ns
ns
3.41*
7.50***
3.76*
Note.
Within
each
row,
means
with
different
subscripts
differ
at the .05
level
of
significance
according
to a
Scheffe
test.
*p<.05.
•*p<.01.
***p<.001.
To
decrease
possible
halo
effects,
the
loneliness
questionnaire
was ad-
ministered
4
weeks
after
the
love-quiz
exercise
was
completed.
Results
and
Discussion
Frequencies
of
the
three
attachment
styles.
The
proportions
of
each
of the
three attachment styles were
highly
similar
in
Study
2 to
what
they
were
in
Study
1:
secure,
56%
(vs.
56% of
newspaper respondents);
avoidanl,
23%
(vs.
25%);
and
anxious/
ambivalent,
20%
(vs.
19%).
It
seems unlikely, therefore,
that
the
newspaper sample
was
biased
in
this
respect.
Differences
in
love
experiences.
The
effects
of
attachment
style
on
love experiences were
also
similar
across
the two
stud-
ies,
as
seen
by
comparing Tables
3 and 6.
Even though only
8
of
the
12
subscales
yielded
significant
mean
differences
with
the
smaller sample, nearly
all
exhibited
the
same pattern
of
means
found
in
Study
1.
Secure respondents characterized their
love
experiences
as
friendly,
happy,
and
trusting, whereas
avoidant
subjects reported
fear
of
closeness,
and
anxious/ambivalent
subjects
described
relationships
marked
by
jealousy, emotional
highs
and
lows,
and
desire
for
reciprocation.
Differences
in
mental
models
(old
items).
As
seen
by
compar-
ing
Tables
4 and 7, the
results
for six of the
seven mental-model
items used
in
Study
1
were
replicated
in
Study
2, the
exception
being
Item
3. (In
Study
1,
avoidant subjects were distinguish-
able
by
their
denial
that
love
can be
rekindled
after
it
wanes,
but in
Study
2
they
were
not.) However, only
two of the
items
produced
significant
differences:
Item
6
("It's
easy
to
fall
in
love.
.
.";
endorsed
by 32%
of
the
anxious/ambivalent,
15% of
the
secure,
and
none
of the
avoidant subjects)
and
Item
7
("It's
rare
to find
someone.
.
.";
endorsed
by 80% of the
avoidant,
55%
of
the
secure,
and
41
% of the
anxious/ambivalent subjects).
One
possible reason
for
differences
between
the two
sets
of re-
sults
is
that
the
college student subjects
had
less
relationship
experience; their average relationship
had
lasted about
1
year,
compared
with
8
years
for
the
newspaper sample. Fewer
of
them
were
willing
to say
that Hollywood romance
doesn't
exist
in
real
life
(Item
1),
more said that
love
doesn't
fade
over
time (Item
4),
and so on.
Differences
in
mental
models
(new
items).
Table
8
shows
the
proportion
of
each attachment group endorsing
the new
men-
tal-model
statements designed
for
Study
2.
Attachment style
had a
significant
effect
on six of the
eight,
including
all but one
of
the
items concerning
self.
The
secure subjects described
themselves
as
easy
to get to
know
and as
liked
by
most people
and
endorsed
the
claim
that
other people
are
generally
well-in-
tentioned
and
good-hearted.
The
anxious/ambivalent subjects
reported
having more
self-doubts,
being misunderstood
and un-
derappreciated,
and finding
others
less willing
and
able than
they
are to
commit themselves
to a
relationship.
The
avoidant
subjects
generally
fell
between
the
extremes
set by the
secure
and
anxious/ambivalent subjects,
and in
most
cases
were closer
Table?
Proportion
of
Respondents
Who
Endorsed
Each Statement
About
Love
(Undergraduate
Sample)
,.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Statement
The
kind
of
head-over-
heels
romantic
love
depicted
in
novels
and
movies
doesn't
exist
in
real life.
Intense
romantic
love
is
common
at the
beginning
of a
relationship,
but it
rarely
lasts
forever.
Romantic
feelings
wax
and
wane
over
the
course
of a
relationship,
but at
times
they
can be as
intense
as
they
were
at
the
start.
In
some
relationships,
romantic
love
really
lasts;
it
doesn't
fade
with
time.
Most
of us
could
love
many
different
people
equally
well;
there
is
no
"one
true
love"
which
is
"meant
to
be."
It's
easy
to
fall
in
love.
I
feel
myself
beginning
to
fall
in
love
often.
It's
rare
to find
someone
you can
really
fall
in
love
with.
Anxious/
F
Ratio
Avoidant
ambivalent
Secure
(2,
104)
.16
.18
.12
ns
.40 .27 .17 ns
.64 .68 .50 ns
.56
.59 .77 ns
.28
.36 .28 ns
.00.
.32b
.15.b
4.96**
.80.
.41b
.55b
4.10*
Note.
Within
each
row,
means
with
different
subscripts
differ
at the .05
level
of
significance
according
to a
Scheffe
test.
*p<.05.
**/»<.01.

LOVE
CONCEPTUALIZED
AS AN
ATTACHMENT PROCESS
519
Table
8
Proportion
of
Respondents
Who
Endorsed
Each
New
Mental-
Model
Item
(Undergraduate Sample)
Item
1.
I am
easier
to get to
know
than most
people.
2.
I
have
more
self-doubts
than
most
people.
3.
People almost
always
like
me.
4.
People
often
misunderstand
me or
fail
to
appreciate
me.
5. Few
people
are as
willing
and
able
as I am
to
commit themselves
to a
long-term
relationship.
6.
People
are
generally
well-intentioned
and
good-hearted.
7.
You
have
to
watch
out
in
dealing with most
people;
they
will
hurt,
ignore,
or
reject
you if
it
suits their purposes.
8.
I am
more independent
and
self-sufficient
than
most people;
I can get
along
quite
well
by
myself.
Avoidant
.32.
.48.
.36.
.36.
.24.
.44.
.32
.80
Anxious/
ambivalent
.32.
.64.
.41.
.50.
.59,
.32.
.32
.59
Secure
^2,104)
.60t
4.39*
.I8b
9.96***
.68b
5.19**
,18b
4.56*
.23.
5.57**
.72b
6.99***
.15
ns
.68 ns
sul
sir
O
c
w
.£
o
«
TJ
•o
S
p
$
V)
Note.
Within each row, means with
different
subscripts
differ
at the .05
level
of
significance
according
to a
Schefle
test.
*f><.05.
**/><.OI.
***;><
.001.
to the
anxious/ambivalent than
to the
secure. Although
the
differences
on the
last
two
items
did not
reach significance,
the
means
were
ordered
in
theoretically
meaningful
ways.
The two
insecure
groups more
often
said
that
one has to
"watch
out in
dealing with most
people,"
and
more
of the
avoidant subjects
(80%)
than
of the
secure (68%)
or
anxious/ambivalent (59%)
subjects
agreed that
"1 can get
along quite
well
by
myself."
Differences
in
attachment
history.
In an
attempt
to
replicate
the
attachment-history
findings of
Study
1
using
data
from
Study
2, we
again performed
a
hierarchical discriminant-func-
tion analysis. Subjects with
no
missing
data
on the
variables
involved
(JV
=
101)
were
included
in the
analysis. Once
again,
both
functions
proved
to be
statistically
significant,
with
a
com-
bined
x2(50,
N =
101)
=
128.30,
p <
.001.
After
removal
of the
first
function,
x2(24,
N
=
101)
was
39.84
(p <
.05).
The two
functions
accounted
for
75.31%
and
24.69%,
respectively,
of the
between-groups
variability.
As
shown
in the
upper panel
of
Fig-
ure
2, the first
discriminant
function
separated anxious/ambiv-
alent
subjects
from
the
other
two
attachment
groups,
a
pattern
different
from
that obtained
in
Study
1.
The
second
function
separated avoidant
from
secure subjects.
Together,
the two
func-
tions correctly classified 75.0%
of the
avoidant subjects, 90.5%
of
the
anxious/ambivalent subjects,
and
85.7%
of the
secure
subjects.
The new
pattern
was due
primarily
to the
fact
that
avoidant
subjects
in
Study
2
described
their attachment
histories
as
more
similar
to
those
of
secure subjects
on
positive trait dimensions
Secure
Anxious/
Ambivalent
Avoidant
co
i
-3-2-1
0 1 2 3
First
discriminant
function
Secure
Anxious/
Ambivalent
Avoidant
-3
-2 -1
1
First
discriminant
function
Figure
2.
Plots
of
three group
centroids
on two
discriminant
functions
derived
from
attachment-history variables.
(The
upper portion
of the
figure
displays
results
for
Study
2; the
lower
portion, results
from
news-
paper
respondents
below
26
years
of
age.)

520
CINDY
KAZAN
AND
PHILLIP
SHAVER
Table
9
Significant
Correlations
Between
Attachment-History
Variables
and
Discriminant
Functions
(Undergraduate
Sample)
Variable
Cold
father
Caring
father
Confident
father
Understanding
mother
Humorous
father
Warm
father
Respectful
father
Good-humored
parental
relationship
Rejecting
mother
Confident
mother
Respectful
mother
Fair
father
Critical
mother
Disinterested
mother
Accepting
mother
Insecure
mother
Cold
mother
Function
1
.25*
-.24'
-.23*
-.22*
-.21*
-.18*
-.17*
-.16*
Function
2
-.42*
.31*
.21*
.19*
-.19*
-.18*
.17*
-.17*
-.16*
Note.
Correlations
marked
with
asterisks
in the first
column
correlated
more
highly
with
Function
1
than
with
Function
2; the
reverse
is
true
in
the
second
column.
than
did
avoidant
subjects
in
Study
1.
In
Study
1,
for
example,
only
12%
of
avoidant subjects said their mother
had
been
ac-
cepting;
in
Study
2
this
figure
jumped
to
50%.
For
sympathetic,
the figure
jumped
from
32% to
79%.
The
same kinds
of
differ-
ences were evident
in
descriptions
of the
relationship
with
fa-
ther
and the
parental relationship.
For
example,
29% of
avoid-
ant
subjects
in
Study
1
described their
parents'
relationship
as
happy;
the
corresponding
figure in
Study
2 was
63%.
For
good-
humored,
the
percentage increased
from
19 to 54.
This
ten-
dency
toward more
favorable
descriptions
on the
part
of
Study
2's
avoidant subjects resulted
in
greater apparent
similarity
to
the
secure subjects;
on
several items,
in
fact,
slightly
more
avoidant
than secure subjects
gave
their parents favorable
re-
ports.
This
did not
keep them,
however,
from
also mentioning
more
negative descriptors, such
as
critical,
rejecting,
and
disin-
terested.
These negative descriptors allowed
the
second discrim-
inant
function
to
distinguish between secure
and
avoidant
groups.
Correlations between
the
17
significant
predictor variables
with
coefficients
above
.
15
and the two
discriminant
functions
are
shown
in
Table
9. The
best discriminators between
anxious/
ambivalent
subjects
and
secure subjects
were
(a) a
relationship
between
parents
that
was
perceived
not to be
good-humored
(-.16),
(b) a
mother
who was not
understanding
(-.22),
and (c)
a
father
who was
cold (.25),
not
caring
(-.24),
and not
confident
(-.23).
In
contrast
to
avoidant subjects, secure
subjects
de-
scribed their mothers
as
respectful
(.21),
accepting
(.17),
not
rejecting
(-.42),
and not
critical
(-.19),
and
their fathers
as
fair
(.19).
Why
should avoidant subjects' attachment
histories
appear
more
similar
to
secure subjects' attachment histories
in the
younger
(college student) sample? Central
to
avoidant attach-
ment
is
defensiveness.
Main
et
al.
(1985)
and
Kobak
and
Sceery
(in
press) have
shown
that avoidant adults
and
college students
tend
to
idealize
their
relationships
with
parents
to
avoid
the
neg-
ative
feelings
associated
with
those
relationships.
Evidently,
it is
only
with
maturity
and
distance
from
parents that
an
avoidant
person
can
begin
to
acknowledge severely negative
aspects
of
his
or her
early relationships.
To
test
the
hypothesis that youth
is an
important
factor,
we
performed
a
third
discriminant-func-
tion analysis,
using
data
from
the
100
youngest newspaper
re-
spondents
(all
under
26
years
of
age).
The
pattern
of
results
proved
to be
highly similar
to the
results
from
Study
2, as
seen
by
comparing
the
upper
and
lower
panels
of
Figure
2.
There
were
two
statistically
significant
discriminant
functions,
and,
as
in
Study
2, the first
distinguished
primarily between
anxious/
ambivalent
subjects
and the
other
two
groups.
The
second
func-
tion
distinguished
primarily
between avoidant
and
secure
sub-
jects.
As
a
further
test
of
whether
differences
were
due to
younger
avoidant
subjects describing
their
attachment
histories
more
fa-
vorably
than
did
older avoidant subjects,
we
compared
the
means
on
attachment variables
for
young (again, under
26
years
of
age)
with
those
of
older newspaper subjects
who had
classified
themselves
as
avoidant.
We
found
that
more
younger
than older
avoidant
subjects described relationships with
and
between
their
parents
in
favorable
terms.
For
example, more described
their mothers
as
loving
(.77
vs.
.57),
«51)
=
2.15,p<.05.
They
were
also
significantly
(p <
.05) more likely
to say
their mothers
were
responsive,
not
intrusive,
and not
rejecting.
The
same pat-
tern
was
found
in
their descriptions
of
their fathers.
For
exam-
ple,
65% of the
young
avoidants
but
only
54% of the
older group
called their
fathers
loving,
tfl57) =
2.13,
p <
.05,
and
they
de-
scribed their fathers
as
significantly
more good-humored. Thus,
differences
between discriminant-function analyses
from the
two
studies seem
to be due to age
differences
between
the two
samples
and the
tendency
for
young avoidant subjects
to
ideal-
ize
their attachment histories.
Differences
in
state
and
trait
loneliness.
Finally, Table
10
re-
ports
mean trait-
and
state-loneliness scores
(on
5-point
scales)
for
each
of the
three attachment groups
in
Study
2. In
line with
Hypothesis
5, the
highest scores
were
obtained
by the
anxious/
ambivalent
subjects
and the
lowest scores
by the
secure subjects.
These
findings fit
with other indications throughout
the two
studies that anxious/ambivalent adults yearn
for
a
love
relation-
ship
involving
merger,
reciprocation,
and
intense
passion—a
relationship
for
which they
find too
few
willing
partners.
In
an
attempt
to
understand
why
avoidant subjects
did not
receive trait-loneliness scores equal
to
those
of
anxious/ambiva-
Table
10
Trait
and
State Loneliness
as a
Function
of
Adult
Attachment
Style
(Undergraduate
Sample)
Loneliness
type
Anxious/
Avoidant
ambivalent
Secure
/T2,
104)
Trait
State
2.30.b
2.57.K
2.59.
3.02.2.01,
2.21,
7.12
6.43
.001
.003
Note.
Within
each
row,
means
with
different
subscripts
differ
at the .05
level
of
significance
according
to a
Scheffe
test.

LOVE
CONCEPTUALIZED
AS AN
ATTACHMENT PROCESS
521
lent
subjects,
we
looked
at
individual
items,
including some
ex-
treme ones
not
included
in the two
scales. (The extra items
were
taken
from
the NYU
Loneliness Scale;
Rubenstein
&
Shaver,
1982.)
Two
kinds
of
items
were
of
special interest:
one
that bla-
tantly
emphasized being
a
lonely person (e.g.,
"I am a
lonely
person,"
"I
always
was a
lonely person")
and
another that
re-
ferred
to
distance
from
others
but
without indicating that
a
lonely
self
was to
blame (e.g.,
"During
the
past
few
years,
no
one has
really
known
me
well," "During
the
past
few
years,
1
have
felt
left
out").
In an
exploratory analysis,
two
items
of
each type
were
aver-
aged
and
contrasted
by
means
of
planned comparisons.
The
comparison
of
anxious/ambivalent subjects
and the
other
two
groups
on
items that implicated
a
trait-lonely self produced
F(\,
80) =
17.88,
p <
.001;
the
comparison
of
secure
and
inse-
cure
groups
on the
more ambiguous items produced
F(
1,80)
=
7.05,
p <
.01.
No
other
comparisons
were
significant.
These exploratory analyses
are
compatible with
findings
re-
ported
by
Kobak
(1985).
In his
study, both
avoidant
and
anx-
ious/ambivalent subjects
were
rated
by
peers
as
less socially
competent
than
secure
subjects,
but
when asked
to
describe
themselves,
only
the
anxious/ambivalent subjects
reported
less
social competence.
Sex
differences
and
similarities.
In
Study
2
there were
no
significant
sex
differences
in any of the
variables
or
patterns
for
which
we had
sufficient
numbers
of men to
make comparisons.
General Discussion
Five
hypotheses concerning adult
love
and
loneliness
were
de-
rived
from
attachment theory
and
research.
The first was the
simplest
prediction
we
could make regarding
the
relative fre-
quencies
of the
three attachment styles: that
they
would
be
about
as
common
in
adulthood
as
they
are in
infancy.
The re-
sults
supported this hypothesis. Across both studies, approxi-
mately
56% of the
subjects classified themselves
as
secure,
ap-
proximately
24% as
avoidant,
and
approximately
20% as
anx-
ious/ambivalent. Campos
et
al.
(1983)
estimated
the figures for
infancy
as 62%
secure,
23%
avoidant,
and
15%
anxious/ambiv-
alent.
Of
course,
it is
unlikely
that
our
single-item measure
of
attachment style measures exactly
the
same thing that
Ains-
worth
et al.
(1978)
coded
from
behavioral observations
of in-
fant-mother dyads,
and it
would
be
naive
to
think that
a
style
adopted
in
infancy
remains
unchanged
or
unelaborated
all
through
life.
Still,
the
search
for
connections between attach-
ment
in
childhood
and
attachment
in
adulthood must begin
somewhere,
and our
simple measure
and
straightforward
hy-
pothesis
fared
surprisingly
well
in
their initial
tests.
The
second hypothesis
predicted
different
kinds
of
love
expe-
riences
for
people
in the
three
attachment-style categories.
The
data supported this
hypothesis,
indicating
a
unique constella-
tion
of
emotions
for
each
of the
three attachment categories
despite
the
existence
of a
general core experience
of
romantic
love.
The
results
were
weaker
in
Study
2
than
in
Study
1,
partly
because
of
sample size
but
also, perhaps, because
of
younger
subjects'
lack
of
relationship experience.
The
third hypothesis predicted that subjects' working models
of
self
and
relationships would
be
related
to
attachment style.
The
results supported this prediction, indicating that people
with
different
attachment orientations entertain
different
be-
liefs
about
the
course
of
romantic love,
the
availability
and
trust-
worthiness
of
love
partners,
and
their
own
love-worthiness.
These
beliefs
may be
part
of a
cycle
(a
vicious
cycle
in the
case
of
insecure people)
in
which
experience
affects
beliefs
about
self
and
others
and
these beliefs
in
turn
affect
behavior
and
relation-
ship outcomes
(Wachtel,
1977).
The
fourth
hypothesis,
like
the first,
predicted
straightfor-
ward
parallels between infant-mother interactions
and
adults'
reports about their childhood relationships with parents. Sim-
ple
adjective
checklists were used
to
assess
remembered rela-
tionships
with
parents
and the
parents'
relationship with each
other
Study
1
indicated that
two
discriminant
functions
based
on
attachment-history items could distinguish
significantly
be-
tween
members
of the
three attachment
categories.
The
most
powerful
function
discriminated between secure
and
insecure
subjects;
the
second
function
discriminated mainly between
the
two
insecure groups. These results
fit
well
with
Ainsworth
et
al.'s(
1978)
findings.
The
results
were
not so
straightforward
for
Study
2,
which
involved
a
younger
group
of
subjects.
For
them,
the
easiest
at-
tachment
styles
to
distinguish, based
on
reports about child-
hood experiences with
parents,
were anxious/ambivalent
on the
one
hand
and
avoidant
and
secure
on the
other.
A
second
func-
tion discriminated mainly between
the
latter
two
groups.
The
differences
between Study
1 and
Study
2
were
interpreted
in
terms
of the
defensiveness
of
young
avoidant subjects.
An
analy-
sis
distinguishing
younger
from
older subjects
in
Study
1
sup-
ported this interpretation.
The fifth
hypothesis predicted greater reported trait
loneli-
ness among insecure than secure subjects, especially among
the
anxious/ambivalents.
This prediction
was
tested
in
Study
2 and
was
supported
by
measures
of
both
trait
and
state loneliness.
Additional
analyses revealed that avoidant subjects admitted
being
distant
from
other people
but did not
report
feeling
lonely.
It
was
impossible
to
evaluate their claims more deeply
to see
whether
they
are
accurate
or
should
be
interpreted
as
additional
examples
of
defensive
avoidance.
Overall,
the
results provide encouraging support
for an at-
tachment-theoretical perspective
on
romantic love, although
a
number
of
caveats
are in
order.
Because
the
Study
1 and
Study
2
questionnaires
had to be
brief
(one
due to the
constraints
of
newspaper space,
the
other
to
limitations
of a
class-exercise
format),
we
were
able
to in-
quire
about
only
a
single romantic
relationship—the one
that
each
subject
considered most important.
To
increase
the
chances
of
detecting
features
of
relationship experience
due to
subjects' attachment styles,
it
would
be
better
to ask
about more
than
one
relationship. Hindy
and
Schwarz
(1984)
questioned
their
subjects (all recent college graduates) about
four
relation-
ships
and
treated these
as
items
on an
anxious-attachment
mea-
sure. They
found
correlations
in the
neighborhood
of .40 be-
tween
each pair
of
relationships
in
terms
of
anxious
attach-
ment, suggesting both considerable continuity (due,
we
suspect,
to
subjects' attachment
style)
and
considerable variation across
relationships. Degree
of
security
or
anxiety
in a
relationship
is,
as
one
would expect,
a
joint
function
of
attachment style
and
factors
unique
to
particular
partners
and
circumstances. This
matter obviously deserves
further
study.

522
CINDY
KAZAN
AND
PHILLIP
SHAVER
It
may be
useful
to
assess both
partners
in a
relationship;
so
far,
we and
Hindy
and
Schwarz
have
relied
on
reports
from
only
one.
It
should
be
possible,
using methods like
those
of
Gottman
(1979)
and
Gottman,
Markman,
and
Notarius
(1977),
to
exam-
ine
not
only
reports
about relationship qualities
but
also
ob-
servable
features
of
couple interaction
in the
laboratory. This
is one way to
extend measurement
beyond
the
realm
of
self-
report.
In
general,
we
have
probably overemphasized
the
degree
to
which
attachment
style
and
attachment-related
feelings
are
traits
rather than products
of
unique
person-situation
interac-
tions. Attachment researchers
often
vacillate between using
the
terms
secure,
avoidant,
and
anxious/ambivalent
to
describe
re-
lationships
and
using
them
to
categorize people.
We
have
fo-
cused here
on
personal continuity,
but we do not
wish
to
deny
that relationships
are
complex,
powerful
phenomena
with
causal
effects
beyond
those predictable
from
personality vari-
ables
alone.
A
secure person trying
to
build
a
relationship
with
an
anxious/ambivalent person might
be
pushed
to
feel
and act
avoidant.
An
avoidant person might cause
a
secure partner
to
feel
and act
anxious,
and so on.
These kinds
of
interactions
de-
serve
study
in
their
own right.
Our
measures
were
limited
in
terms
of
number
of
items
and
simplicity
of
answer
alternatives,
and
this should
be
corrected
in
future
work.
However,
there
are
reasons
to
suspect that
no
amount
of
psychometric improvement
will
solve
all the
prob-
lems
associated
with
self-report assessment
of
attachment-re-
lated variables. First
of
all,
subjects
may be
unable
to
articulate
exactly
how
they
feel
in
love
relationships. Second,
subjects
are
unlikely
to
have
anything
like
perfect
memory
for
their love
ex-
periences
or for the
nature
of
their relationships with parents,
especially those
during
the
preschool years. Third, subjects
are
likely
to be
defensive
and
self-serving
in
their recall
and
descrip-
tion
of
some
of the
events
we
wish
to
inquire about.
One way
around some
of the
problems
with
self-report mea-
sures
is to ask
outsiders
to
describe subjects'
relationship-rele-
vant
characteristics. Kobak
and
Sceery
(in
press)
did so in a
recent
study
of
attachment
styles
of
college
freshmen. They
had
two
acquaintances
of
each subject describe
him or her by
using
a
Q-sort
procedure,
and the two
sets
of
results
were
averaged.
Subjects'
attachment
styles
were
assessed
by a
long clinical
in-
terview
designed
by
George, Kaplan,
and
Main
(1984).
The re-
sults
indicated that secure
subjects
were
described
by
acquain-
tances
as
more socially competent, charming,
cheerful,
and
lik-
able
than their avoidant
and
anxious/ambivalent classmates.
The two
insecure groups
differed
in
theoretically expected
ways,
the
avoidant group
being
described
as
more hostile
and
defen-
sive,
for
example,
and the
anxious/ambivalent group
as
more
self-conscious
and
preoccupied
with
relationship issues.
The
attachment interview designed
by
George
et
al.
(1984)
is
itself
an
important alternative
to the
kinds
of
self-report mea-
sures
we
used because
it
includes assessments
of
defensiveness,
apparently blocked memories
of
important relational episodes
with
parents,
and
preoccupation with attachment issues
(on the
part
of
anxious/ambivalent
subjects).
In
fact,
focusing
on
defen-
siveness
and
information-processing
style
led
Main
et al.
(1985)
to
conceptualize mental models somewhat
differently
than
we
did.
Whereas
we
attempted
to
assess consciously held
beliefs
about
self
and
relationships,
Main
et al.
attempted
to
assess
how
information
is
processed
and
distorted.
Even
within
the
self-report domain,
it
should
be
possible
to
improve
on our
single-item measure
of
attachment style. Each
of
our
answer alternatives included more than
one
issue
or di-
mension,
for
example, ease
of
getting close
to
others,
feeling
comfortable
with
caregiving
and
care
receiving,
fear
of
aban-
donment.
In
principle, each such issue could
be
assessed sepa-
rately,
with
a
multi-item scale,
and
then attachment types could
be
derived
by
profile
analysis. Besides being potentially more
reliable, such
a
method would allow subjects
to
endorse
parts
of
what
is
currently
forced
on
them
as a
single alternative.
Aside
from
measurement problems,
the
attachment
ap-
proach
to
romantic
love
must overcome important conceptual
dilemmas.
In our
preliminary studies,
we
have
chosen
to
over-
look
the
fact
that
child-parent
relationships
differ
in
important
ways
from
adult romantic relationships.
One
of
the
most impor-
tant
differences
is
that romantic
love
is
usually
a
two-way
street;
both partners
are
sometimes anxious
and
security-seeking
and
at
other
times
able providers
of
security
and
care.
A
second
im-
portant
difference
is
that romantic
love
almost
always
involves
sexual
attraction
(Tennov,
1979),
whereas
only
the
most specu-
lative
psychoanalysts
have
claimed that
infants'
attachments
to
the
mother
are
sexual
in
nature.
Bowlby
(1979)
and
Ainsworth
et al.
(1978),
taking their
cue
from
ethology,
have
dealt
with
problems
such
as
these
by
postulating distinct behavioral
sys-
tems.
These include, among others,
the
attachment system,
the
caregiving
system,
and the
mating
or
reproductive system.
Adult
romantic
love
seems
to
involve
the
integration
of
these
three systems,
with
the
form
of the
integration being
influenced
by
attachment history
(Shaver
et
al.,
in
press).
Another
important issue
has to do
with continuity
and
change
in
attachment
style.
For
theoretical reasons,
we
were
in-
terested
in
examining
evidence
for
continuity
of
attachment
style
between childhood
and
adulthood,
and we
consider
it im-
portant that there
is
good evidence
for
continuity between
ages
1
and 6 and
preliminary retrospective evidence
for
continuity
in
our own
adult data.
Nevertheless,
it
would
be
overly
pessimis-
tic—from the
perspective
of
insecurely attached
people—to
conclude
that continuity
is the
rule rather than
the
exception
between
early
childhood
and
adulthood.
The
correlations
we
obtained
between
parent variables
and
current attachment type
were
statistically
significant
but not
strong. They
were
higher
in
Study
2,
where
the
average
subject
was 15 to 20
years
younger
than
in
Study
1.
(Also,
when
we
divided
the
newspaper sample
into
younger
and
older
age
groups
in an
analysis
not reported
here,
correlations
with
parent variables
were
higher
for the
younger
group.)
It
seems
likely
that continuity between child-
hood
and
adult experiences
decreases
as one
gets
further
into
adulthood. (See
Skolnick,
in
press,
for
relevant longitudinal evi-
dence.)
The
average
person participates
in
several important
friendships
and
love
relationships, each
of
which
provides
an
opportunity
to revise
mental models
of
self
and
others.
Main
et
al.
(1985)
reported
that,
despite
an
impressive
associ-
ation
between
adults' attachment history
and the
attachment
styles
of
their
own
young
children, some parents
had
freed
themselves
from
the
chain
of
cross-generational
continuity.
That
is,
some adults
who
reported being insecure
in
their rela-
tionships
with
parents managed
to
produce children
who
were

LOVE
CONCEPTUALIZED
AS AN
ATTACHMENT
PROCESS
523
securely attached
at
ages
1 and 6.
Careful
study
of
these cases
suggested
to
Main
et
al.
that
the
adults
had
mentally worked
through
their
unpleasant
experiences
with
parents
and now had
mental
models
of
relationships more typical
of
secure subjects.
The
process
by
which
an
insecure person becomes increasingly
secure, probably
by
participating
in
relationships
that
discon-
firm
negative
features
of
experience-based mental models,
offers
an
important avenue
for
future
research.
Our
results sug-
gest
that younger
avoidant
adults
are
especially prone
to
defen-
sive
distortion
of
memories
of
relationships with
and
between
parents. Older avoidant
subjects
presented
a
much less
favor-
able
portrait
of
their parents.
Because
many
social psychologists
are
likely
to
misread
our
approach
as
Freudian,
it may be
worthwhile
to
contrast Freud-
ian
conceptions
of
infant-to-adult
continuity
on the one
hand
with
attachment theory's conception
on the
other.
Unlike
the
Freudian conception, according
to
which
the
supposed
irratio-
nalities
of
adult
love
indicate regression
to
infancy
or fixation
at
some earlier stage
of
psychosexual
development, attachment
theory
includes
the
idea that social development involves
the
continual
construction, revision, integration,
and
abstraction
of
mental
models. This idea, which
is
similar
to the
notion
of
scripts
and
schemas
in
cognitive
social
psychology (e.g.,
Fiske
&
Taylor,
1984),
is
compatible with
the
possibility
of
change
based
on new
information
and
experiences,
although change
may
become more
difficult
with repeated,
unconnected
use of
habitual models
or
schemas.
Freud
argued
his
case
beautifully,
if not
persuasively,
by
liken-
ing
the
unconscious
to the
city
of
Rome,
which
has
been rav-
aged,
revised,
and
rebuilt many times
over
the
centuries.
In the
case
of the
unconscious, according
to
Freud,
it is as if all the
previous
cities still exist,
in
their original
form
and on the
same
site.
Bowlby's
conception
is
more
in
line
with
actual archeology.
The
foundations
and
present shapes
of
mental models
of
self
and
social
life
still
bear
similarities
and
connections
to
their
predecessors—some
of the
important historical landmarks,
bridges,
and
crooked streets
are
still there.
But few of the an-
cient structures exist unaltered
or in
mental isolation,
so
simple
regression
and fixation are
unlikely.
The
attachment-theory approach
to
romantic
love
suggests
that
love
is a
biological
as
well
as a
social
process,
based
in the
nervous
system
and
serving
one or
more important
functions.
This
view
runs counter
to the
increasingly popular idea that
romantic
love
is a
historical-cultural
invention, perhaps
a
cre-
ation
of
courtly lovers
in
13th-century
Europe (e.g.,
Averill,
1985;
de
Rougement, 1940). This
is
obviously
a
matter
for
seri-
ous
cross-cultural
and
historical research,
but in the
absence
of
strong
evidence
to the
contrary,
we
hypothesize that romantic
love
has
always
and
everywhere existed
as a
biological potential,
although
it has
often
been precluded
as a
basis
for
marriage.
There
are
explicit records
of
romantic
love
in all of the
great
literate
civilizations
of
early
historic
times,
from
Egypt
and
China
to
Greece
and
Rome
(Mellen,
1981).
Finally,
we
should make clear that
by
calling romantic
love
an
attachment process
we do not
mean
to
imply
that
the
early
phase
of
romance
is
equivalent
to
being attached.
Our
idea,
which
requires
further
development,
is
that romantic
love
is a
biological
process
designed
by
evolution
to
facilitate attach-
ment
between adult sexual partners who,
at the
time
love
evolved,
were
likely
to
become parents
of an
infant
who
would
need
their reliable care.
The
noticeable
decrease
in
fascination
and
preoccupation
as
lovers
move
from
the
romantic (attaching) phase
to
what
can
become
a
decades-long
period
of
secure attachment
is
evident
not
only
in the
case
of
romantic
love
but
also
in
early childhood,
when
most secure children begin
to
take parental support
for
granted
(barring unexpected separations).
As
Berscheid
(1983)
has
shown
in her
analysis
of the
apparent
unemotionality
of
many
marriages, disruptions such
as
divorce
and
widowhood
often
"activate
the
attachment
system,"
to use
Bowlby's phrase,
and
reveal
the
strength
of
attachment bonds that were
pre-
viously
invisible. Loneliness
and
grieving
are
often
signs
of the
depth
of
broken attachments.
In
sum,
love
and
loneliness
are
emotional processes that serve
biological
functions.
Attachment theory portrays them
in
that
light
and
urges
us to go
beyond simpler
and
less theoretically
integrative
models
involving
concepts
such
as
attitude (e.g.,
Ru-
bin, 1973)
and
physiological arousal (Berscheid
&
Walster,
1974).
For
that reason,
the
attachment approach seems worth
pursuing
even
if
future
study reveals
(as it
almost
certainly will)
that
adult romantic
love
requires additions
to or
alterations
in
attachment theory.
It
would
not be
surprising
to find
that adult
love
is
more complex than
infant-caretaker
attachment,
despite
fundamental
similarities.
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Received
March
5,
1986
Revision
received
October
8,
1986
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