Discover Your Attachment Style for Free
For professionals, understanding these styles through an attachment style assessment can lead to better self-awareness and more informed decisions in their romantic lives. It can help them understand their own patterns and those of potential partners, facilitating healthier and more fulfilling relationships.Understanding your attachment style is the first step in improving your relationships and enhancing your dating experience. We’re excited to offer you a FREE Attachment Style Quiz to help you identify your current attachment style and gain valuable insights into how it influences your relationships.
John Bowlby
John Bowlby is considered the father of attachment theory. He proposed that the bonds formed by children with their primary caregivers have an evolutionary function—that being close to a primary caregiver is beneficial for a child's survival. Bowlby's theory suggested that children are born with an innate drive to form attachments with caregivers because these bonds provide security and safety. According to Bowlby, these early attachment experiences influence patterns of behavior in later relationships. He identified the concept of a "secure base," which is the idea that the presence of a reliable attachment figure provides children with the security necessary to explore the world.
Mary Ainsworth
Mary Ainsworth expanded on Bowlby’s ideas through her empirical research. She developed the "Strange Situation Protocol," a laboratory procedure to observe the attachment relationships between a caregiver and children. This study led to the identification of three primary attachment styles: secure, anxious-ambivalent (also known as anxious), and avoidant. Securely attached children showed distress when separated from caregivers and joy when the caregiver returned, using the caregiver as a secure base from which to explore their environment. Anxiously attached children were extremely distressed when separated and ambivalent upon return, showing difficulty being comforted. Avoidant children showed little distress upon separation and avoided the caregiver when they returned, showing little or no preference for the caregiver over strangers.
Cindy Hazan & Phillip Shaver
Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver later extended Bowlby’s and Ainsworth’s theories to adult romantic relationships. They proposed that the same attachment styles seen in infants—secure, anxious, and avoidant—also appear in the ways adults behave in their romantic relationships. Hazan and Shaver argued that adult romantic love could be conceptualized as an attachment process, one that shares similarities with the attachment patterns observed in infants. Adults with secure attachment styles tend to have healthy, trusting relationships; those with anxious attachment styles may be clingy and fear abandonment; and those with avoidant attachment styles might struggle with intimacy and independence within relationships.
These theories together provide a framework for understanding the importance of early relationships and how these foundational experiences can shape emotional patterns and relationship dynamics throughout life.
There are four main attachment styles:
Secure Attachment
Anxious (Preoccupied) Attachment
Dismissive-Avoidant Attachment
Disorganized-Avoidant Attachment (Fearful/Anxious)
