Collaborative Research: Separating transient and enduring forms of change in adult attachment styles

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Having strong close relationships with others is associated with health and well-being. However, people vary in how secure they are in their close relationships. Although some people are relatively confident that others will be available and supportive when needed, other people are not. These individual differences, or what social and personality psychologists sometimes refer to as attachment styles, have broad consequences for interpersonal functioning, emotion regulation, and health. How stable are attachment styles? Do certain life experiences (e.g., starting a new relationship, losing a loved one) have the potential to change attachment styles? And, if so, are these changes temporary or are they enduring? These relatively basic questions, despite being foundational for the field, have been difficult to answer; the proposed research will address this critical gap. More broadly, the proposed work will provide valuable information on what kinds of experiences can be catalysts for change. Given that attachment relationships can play a role in mental and physical health, this research may shed light on how shifts in interpersonal processes and experiences could facilitate well-being.The primary focus of the proposed research is to determine what kinds of life events and interpersonal experiences lead to enduring vs. transient changes in attachment security. To accomplish this, people will be recruited to complete self-report measures of attachment styles, personality, and interpersonal experiences once a month for a period of 24 months. This research methodology has the potential to advance our understanding of stability and change in in two crucial ways. First, previous studies have rarely had access to multiple assessments of attachment style following important life events, making it difficult to know whether changes in security are fleeting. Second, researchers rarely have access to multiple assessments of attachment style before specific life events take place, making it difficult to know how people were (or were not) changing before specific life events. The longitudinal methods in the current research will allow estimation of trajectories of security before and after naturally occurring life events. Moreover, because the proposed research addresses a set of issues that are of broad significance in social, developmental, and personality psychology, this investigation has the potential to contribute to a framework for understanding stability and change in personality and interpersonal processes more generally.