What is "Attachment" in Adults?
- Marian Bakermans-Kranenburg
- 2 minutes ago
- 5 min read
I am a professor of Developmental Psychology in Portugal and Chile. About thirty years ago, I did my PhD research on the quality of an interview to measure attachment in adults. The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) was then, in the 1990s, a relatively new method, and its qualities needed testing. Since then, the use has increased exponentially. Now, when we search the literature, there are 354 studies with a total of more than 26,000 interviews.
What is Attachment?
We have an inborn tendency to develop relationships. Children need caring adults simply to survive, and they need stable caregivers to thrive emotionally. In a secure attachment relationship, children use their caregiver as a haven of safety when they are frightened, hurt, or ill. Once comforted, they are ready to explore the world again, knowing that they have someone to rely on when necessary. In less secure attachment relationships, children do not develop the same level of trust.
In adolescence and adulthood, we reflect on the experiences with our caregivers and further develop ideas and feelings about other close relationships. That is what is called a "representation of attachment". The AAI measures this representation of attachment.
Questions of the Interview
The interview asks questions about childhood, such as: Can you describe the relationship with your parents when you were young? Can you tell me a specific event as an illustration? What happened when you were ill?
The interview also asks about current feelings and thoughts: How do you think those experiences have influenced your personality? And a few questions deal with experiences of loss or traumatic events: Have you lost through death someone who was close to you? Have you experienced something that might be considered traumatic?
Coding the Adult Attachment Interview
The interesting thing about the interview is that it does not focus on the importance of specific childhood events, but rather on distinct patterns based on how people speak about their childhood experiences. This is best done by analysing text; therefore, interviews are recorded and transcribed. Coders look at how coherent a transcript is.
In a secure interview, the reader can easily follow the story as it is told and will agree with the evaluations made by the interviewee. General descriptions of caregivers and relationships are not in contrast with specific memories. In other words, secure interviews are coherent.
But, interviews can also be incoherent, and these interviews are considered insecure; when very positive general descriptions are linked with memories of unhappy events, experiences of rejection, or if no evidence is given because the interviewee can’t remember anything. If negative events are acknowledged, but their positive effects are stressed ("it made me stronger"), those interviews are coded as "Dismissing". Interviews are coded as "Preoccupied" when they are incoherent because interviewees are lost in their own thoughts and feelings during the interview. They seem angrily or passively overwhelmed by their childhood experiences. In addition to these three insecure categories (Secure, Dismissing, and Preoccupied), interviews can be coded for "Unresolved" loss or other trauma. On the topics of loss or traumatic events, when there are contradictions, or when the interviewee addresses the person who passed away as if they are still alive, interviews are coded as Unresolved. Dismissing, Preoccupied, and Unresolved interviews are indicative of insecure representations of attachment.
Are the Majority of Adults Secure?
Yes, in non-clinical samples, the majority of adults have a secure representation of attachment, 30% have a dismissing representation, and 14% are coded as preoccupied. Around 17% have unresolved loss or other trauma. That might seem like a lot, but it is a reminder of the fact that groups who suffer the most losses and traumatic events often find it difficult to come to terms with these experiences; adversities tend to cluster.
When we focus on secure, dismissing, and preoccupied attachments, we do not see a difference between males and females. The idea that males are more distancing and more dismissive of close relationships is mostly based on self-report measures of attachment styles. The Adult Attachment Interview does not show such differences between males and females.
Adolescents
So, no difference between males and females. However, we do find a difference between age groups: adolescents show the same proportion of secure interviews as adults, but relatively more dismissing (35%) and fewer preoccupied (10%) interviews.
It may well be that adolescence is, at least for some, a period during which the relationship with parents becomes less close, while stable romantic relationships have not yet developed. If, as an adolescent, you are working on your independence, you may (temporarily) place greater stress on self-reliance. When asked, you may talk about the relationships with your parents as not so important, which is in line with a Dismissing interview. But, it is good to realise that this focus on self-reliance does not mean invulnerability, for we also find that adolescents, especially girls, are vulnerable to unresolved loss.
A Global Perspective
Caregiving routines differ around the world in terms of valuing autonomy or interdependence. Nevertheless, for child-parent attachment, the country or continent does not make much of a difference for the proportions of children with secure and insecure attachments. The same is true of adult attachment. We find similar proportions of secure, dismissing, and preoccupied interviews around the world. However, some continents are uncharted territory.
Clinical Groups
The most striking difference between clinical - referring to adults with a diagnosed mental health condition - and non-clinical groups - referring to adults with no diagnosis of a mental health condition - is the much higher proportion of unresolved interviews. While in non-clinical groups, on average, 17% have unresolved loss or trauma, in clinical groups, this is 40%. In all clinical groups, whether charactersed by externalising (addiction, antisocial behavior), internalising (depression, anxiety, eating disorders, obsessive compulsive disorders, borderline, PTSD), or thought disorders (schizophrenia), the proportion of secure interviews is lower and the proportion of unresolved interviews is higher than in non-clinical groups. Additionally, some disorders seem to go together (more often than chance) with dismissing attachment representations (e.g., obsessive-compulsive disorders), and others with preoccupied attachment representations (e.g., borderline).
What does this all mean?
Attachment relationships are an important part of life, from infancy to adulthood, or, in the words of John Bowlby, who is the ‘grandfather’ of attachment theory, "from the cradle to the grave".
Adults have different thoughts and feelings when it comes to attachment, and these can be measured with the Adult Attachment Interview. But note that the interview has been developed for comparisons between groups. It is not meant for diagnosing individuals. For individual diagnostics, more sensitive measures are needed. Moreover, without thorough training, it is impossible to rate your own or someone else’s representation of attachment. That said, it can make sense to think about your experiences and how these have affected you. What we have learned from this study comparing 26,000 interviews is that clinical groups more often have insecure adult attachment, and in particular unresolved loss and other trauma.