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    Adult attachment styles

    成人依恋类型

    Model
    Also called
    Adult romantic attachment, Adult attachment orientations

    Adult attachment research applies Attachment theory to close adult relationships, starting with Hazan and Shaver’s 1987 work on romantic love. Today it is usually measured on two dimensions: attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance.[1]

    Select a cell to see that category. The horizontal axis corresponds to attachment anxiety and the vertical to avoidance; current research usually uses these two continuous scores rather than four boxes.
    Bartholomew’s four categories: the horizontal axis is the view of self (anxiety), the vertical axis the view of others (avoidance). Point at or tap parts of the figure for details
    Bartholomew’s four categories: the horizontal axis is the view of self (anxiety), the vertical axis the view of others (avoidance). Save as image (PNG)

    Key points

    • Bartholomew and colleagues (1991) sorted adults into four categories, secure, preoccupied, dismissing and fearful, by whether their views of self and of others are positive.[1][2]
    • The 36-item ECR by Brennan and colleagues (1998) measures anxiety and avoidance: anxiety tracks a negative view of self, avoidance a negative view of others.[1]
    • In an observational study of 80 couples, secure and preoccupied partners showed more trust, attentiveness and pleasant expression in conversation than dismissing or fearful partners.[2]
    • The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) comes from a separate tradition: it asks adults about childhood attachment, codes how coherently they tell it, and relates to their infants’ patterns.[3]

    An example

    Lin texts her partner and, after two hours without a reply, keeps checking her phone, worried he has stopped caring. Jay, after every argument, wants to be alone and avoids talking about feelings. Lin’s reaction resembles the questionnaire’s anxiety items; Jay’s resembles its avoidance items.

    Misreadings and limits

    Online quizzes often assign one type as a lifelong label. Researchers prefer continuous scores, and longitudinal studies find adult attachment only moderately stable, shifting with factors such as life stress.[1][4]

    Sources

    1. 1 Guzmán-González, M., Rivera-Ottenberger, D., Brassard, A., Spencer, R., & Lafontaine, M.-F. (2020). Measuring adult romantic attachment: Psychometric properties of the brief Spanish version of the Experiences in Close Relationships. Psicologia: Reflexão e Crítica, 33, Article 9. doi:10.1186/s41155-020-00145-w
    2. 2 Guerrero, L. K. (1996). Attachment-style differences in intimacy and involvement: A test of the four-category model. Communication Monographs, 63(4), 269–292. doi:10.1080/03637759609376395
    3. 3 Bretherton, I. (1992). The origins of attachment theory: John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth. Developmental Psychology, 28(5), 759–775. View source
    4. 4 王岩, & 王大华 (2012). 成人依恋的稳定性. 心理发展与教育, 28(4), 442–448. View source

    Last checked against sources: October 26, 2026