A cross-cultural survey study examined the impact of adult attachment and self-construal on relationship and mental health outcomes in Hong Kong, Mexico, and the United States. Approximately 200 university students (each currently involved in a romantic relationship) from each culture were recruited to participate. Participants completed self-report measures of adult attachment style, self-construal and several questionnaires about their romantic relationships. The dependent measures examined were relationship satisfaction, commitment, and perceived social support, along with the mental health variable of depressive symptoms. Both universal and culture-specific patterns of adult attachment were observed. Attachment insecurity was negatively related to relationship and mental health outcomes in all cultures under study, providing support for a universal interpretation of attachment theory. However, the negative effects of avoidant attachment on relationship outcomes were found to be stronger in Hong Kong and in Mexico. These findings provide support for a degree of cultural specificity to attachment processes. Additional findings centered on self-construal, and showed that independent self-construal was particularly detrimental to relationship outcomes in Hong Kong. Implications for attachment theory and self-construal research are discussed.

Very little research has studied the common challenge in adulthood of coming to terms with the eventual mortality of one’s parents as they age and experience illness. The present work begins to explore this emotional adjustment and draws on Attachment Theory and the study of how people cope with their own mortality (Terror Management Theory) to develop hypotheses about potential responses of the adult child. Feelings of vigilance and thoughts or behavioural predispositions toward proximity-seeking, disengagement, and control are considered. I hypothesized specific differences in these responses based on the tendency for those high in attachment anxiety to ‘hyperactivate’ attachment-related thoughts and for those high in attachment avoidance to ‘deactivate’ these thoughts. Study 1 used self-report measures in a community sample of adults for whom a parent had experienced a significant illness. Participants high in either attachment anxiety or attachment avoidance were less likely to seek proximity to ill parents than those low on these attachment dimensions. Those high in attachment avoidance were also less likely to experience feelings of vigilance for signs of illness in their parents and to want to assert control over their parents’ health care relative to those who were low in attachment avoidance. These findings were consistent with hypotheses based on attachment avoidance but opposite to hypotheses based on attachment anxiety. Variation in responses to an ill parent was also found depending on the age of participants and their parents, the severity of the parents’ illness and their health care behaviours, and whether the adult served as a caregiver for their parent. Using a word-completion task, Study 2 assessed whether themes of proximity, disengagement, and control were cognitively accessible following imaginal induction of a parents’ mortality, participants’ own mortality, or an experience of physical pain. The pattern of results did not support hypothesized differences in reaction times based on dimensions of attachment anxiety and avoidance. Predicted differences based on which induction was completed were also not found. Self-report responses replicated findings from Study 1 such that participants high in attachment anxiety were less likely to want to seek proximity to ill parents when thinking about their mortality than those low in attachment anxiety, and that those high in attachment avoidance were less likely to feel vigilant and to want to seek proximity or to assert control over their parent relative to those who scored low on measures of attachment avoidance. The manner in which adults respond to being confronted with their parents’ mortality has significant implications for their own emotional well-being as well as for the emotional and physical well-being of their parent. Given that adults often become caregivers for their ill and aging parents, this area of study warrants further research.

A cross-cultural survey study examined the impact of adult attachment and self-construal on relationship and mental health outcomes in Hong Kong, Mexico, and the United States. Approximately 200 university students (each currently involved in a romantic relationship) from each culture were recruited to participate. Participants completed self-report measures of adult attachment style, self-construal and several questionnaires about their romantic relationships. The dependent measures examined were relationship satisfaction, commitment, and perceived social support, along with the mental health variable of depressive symptoms. Both universal and culture-specific patterns of adult attachment were observed. Attachment insecurity was negatively related to relationship and mental health outcomes in all cultures under study, providing support for a universal interpretation of attachment theory. However, the negative effects of avoidant attachment on relationship outcomes were found to be stronger in Hong Kong and in Mexico. These findings provide support for a degree of cultural specificity to attachment processes. Additional findings centered on self-construal, and showed that independent self-construal was particularly detrimental to relationship outcomes in Hong Kong. Implications for attachment theory and self-construal research are discussed.

Four adult attachment styles that have been extensively reported in the literature have been labeled secure, dismissing, preoccupied, and fearful. Unfortunately, there are no existing published studies that measure attachment styles of incarcerated women. This study used responses from 158 women incarcerated at a federal prison on the Relationship Questionnaire, Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-III (MCMI-III), and Record of Maltreatment Experiences to examine several facets of the association of attachment styles with childhood abuse and scales on the MCMI-III. The inmates who survived abuse endorsed the fearful and preoccupied attachment styles more, and the secure style less, than did the women who did not acknowledge a history of abuse. There was no statistically significant finding among attachment styles based on physical or sexual abuse. Inmates who were abused by a family member were more likely to endorse the fearful attachment style. The depressive, sadistic, and dependent MCMI-III scales were determined to be more highly associated with fearful or preoccupied attachment styles than with dismissing or secure styles. Finally, the inmates endorsed the anxious/ambivalent (fearful and preoccupied) attachment style more, and the secure style less, than non-incarcerated individuals as reported in the literature.

The current study examines both attachment style and the current romantic relationship's influence on exploration. A sample was gathered of 152 female and 130 male undergraduate students from Texas A&M University. The study found that attachment styles were related to the participants' perceptions of their partner with regards to exploration. Specifically, avoidant people report using exploration as a means to distance themselves from their partner. Anxious people respond that they are dependant on their partner to explore. In addition, the study found that the Anxiety dimension predicted exploration across a range of established scales from the literature. Finally, the study presents evidence that the degree to which anxious people feel that they explore out of dependency on their partner mediates the association between anxiety and exploration. These findings highlight the importance of accounting for the current relationship partner in future studies of exploration and attachment.

Dissertation (MHSc--Health Science) -- AUT University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references. Also held in print ( 92 leaves ; 30 cm.) in the Archive at the City Campus (T 294.3366168914 DIL)

Thesis (M.S.) in Human Development--University of Maine, 2001. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 44-47).

This study examined mother-infant attachment relationships as identified by a social work team working with a highly vulnerable cohort. Infants in the ultra-high risk population are most at risk of poor attachment styles. Mothers often have a history of childhood abuse and adversity, criminality, substance abuse, and poor mental health. When combined with socio-environmental aspects within families a high incidence of poor attachment is likely. This study investigated Social Workers’ identification of attachment issues using qualitative methodology in the form of document analysis of Social Worker case notes and semi-structured interviews with Social Workers. Results indicate that the accuracy and frequency of identifying attachment varied and that often the focus was on individual behaviours rather than the dynamic attachment processes of the mother-infant dyad. Disturbance in the attachment relationship was most clearly and accurately identified in cases that involved a major disruption to the mother-infant relationship. Attachment styles were identified as secure in almost every non-crisis case, particularly in the infant’s early years. Possible early manifestations of insecure attachment styles were not viewed through the lens of attachment theory, but rather in the context of behavioural and parenting problems. The potency of the Social Worker-mother relationship emerged as a factor that may in and of itself be crucial in helping mothers attach to their infants.

A central goal of this study is to better understand why some mothers become unresolved with respect to experiences of loss whereas others do not. Adults are considered to be unresolved with respect to loss if they display signs of mental disorganization while discussing an attachment-related loss due to death – for example, talking in the present tense about a deceased person as if the person is still alive (Main, Goldwyn, & Hesse, 2002). Studies have accumulated documenting the negative consequences of being unresolved. Researchers have linked unresolved attachment to frightened/frightening maternal behavior (Jacobvitz, Leon, & Hazen, 2006), drug/alcohol abuse (Riggs & Jacobvitz, 2002), and other Axis I and II disorders (Ward, Lee, & Polan, 2006; Fonagy et al., 1996); as well as anxiety, anger, (Busch, Cowan, & Cowan, 2008) and controlling behavior (Creasey, 2002) in romantic relationships. Less is known about the conditions under which a person becomes unresolved. This study will be one of the first to examine the comprehensive effects of several risk factors known to influence a person’s ability to resolve a loss including kinship, cause of death, and suddenness as well as primary attachment pattern. Other factors included in this study are social support and lifestyle changes. Although attachment theory provides a thorough explanation for an individual’s inability to resolve a loss, it is only one of many theoretical explanations of this phenomenon (Rando, 1993). One theory that is conceptually similar to unresolved loss is the theory of complicated grief, the process of painful searching and yearning for a deceased person (Prigerson et al., 1995b). Like those who study unresolved loss, complicated grief researchers are still seeking to understand what factors can predict whether an individual will experience prolonged symptoms of grief (van der Houwen et al., 2010). Also similar to unresolved loss, complicated grief involves irregular patterns of mental processes following a loss; however, complicated grief seems to be a conscious process, whereas unresolved loss has non-conscious components. Hence, this dissertation also examined whether complicated grief was related to unresolved loss and, if so, whether the origins for complicated grief were similar to unresolved loss. / text

This study assessed the associations between adult attachment, disclosure, and relational uncertainty in both cyclical and non-cyclical dating relationships using a sample of 114 participants. The analysis revealed significant relationships between relational disclosure and relational uncertainty, attachment avoidance and relational disclosure, attachment anxiety and relational uncertainty, as well as attachment avoidance and relational uncertainty. Relational status (i.e., cyclical/non-cyclical) was neither related to relational disclosure or self-disclosure, nor served as a significant moderator between relational disclosure and relational uncertainty or self-disclosure and relational uncertainty. The results are considered in terms of how individual characteristics shaped by interpersonal interaction (i.e., attachment, relational uncertainty) are associated with specific communication patterns (i.e., disclosure) in dating relationships. / text