Rethinking adult attachment: a study of expert consensus.
Self-report questionnaires designed to assess attachment in adulthood potentially confound global valence of relationships (e.g., liking and disliking) with attachment. The authors surveyed an international panel of experts to develop items for a new measure of attachment that systematically distinguishes between attachment and non-attachment aspects of relationships. The survey yielded a large set of items on which there is consensus in five domains: secure attachment, dismissing attachment, preoccupied attachment, positive non-attachment, and negative non-attachment. This report presents a content analysis of the core themes in each of these five domains and discusses implications of these results for conceptualizing and researching adult attachment.
Allen
Jon G
JG
Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health Sciences at the Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77280, USA. jallen@menninger.edu
Stein
Helen
H
Fonagy
Peter
P
Fultz
Jim
J
Target
Mary
M
D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D009769:Object Attachment