Insecurity, stress, and symptoms of psychopathology: contrasting results from self-reports versus interviews of adult attachment.
This report was designed to clarify links among self-reports of psychiatric symptomatology, stress, and adult attachment insecurity, as operationalized using measures drawn from both the developmental and social psychological literatures. Based on a sample of 160 college students, this study demonstrated that insecurity reflected in the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) was associated with self-reports of psychiatric symptomatology principally for individuals experiencing high levels of life stress (consistent with a diathesis-stress model) whereas self-reports of attachment-related avoidance and anxiety correlated robustly with psychopathology under conditions of both relatively high and low life stress (consistent with a risk model). Results provide further evidence that social psychological and developmental approaches to the assessment of adult attachment-related variation are associated with domains of adaptation central to Bowlby's account of human development in empirically distinct ways.
Fortuna
Keren
K
Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA.
Roisman
Glenn I
GI
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D007406:Interview, Psychological; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D009769:Object Attachment; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D012650:Self Disclosure; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000523:psychology*; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology