Examining the Interpersonal Properties of Attachment Avoidance and Anxiety in Romantic Relationships Using the Interpersonal Circumplex

Abstract

Attachment avoidance and attachment anxiety are associated with a range of negative outcomes, including relationship quality, interpersonal distress, and loneliness. However, many measures of attachment in adulthood focus exclusively on attachment in romantic relationships. Although theory suggests that attachment patterns should generalize across relationships, there is limited research that systematically examines this assumption. Due to attachment’s widespread impact on individual and interpersonal functioning, the purpose of the current study is to better understand the interpersonal characteristics associated with attachment avoidance and anxiety in romantic relationships using the interpersonal circumplex (IPC). A sample of 397 MTurk participants completed measures of attachment and interpersonal problems, efficacies, and sensitivities. Data were analyzed using the structural summary method (SSM) with bootstrapped confidence intervals. Overall, results suggest that attachment avoidance was associated with problems maintaining too much distance (θ = 169.6), the ability to maintain distance effectively (θ = 170.7), and sensitivity to dependency in others (θ = 312.9), whereas attachment anxiety was associated with the ability to maintain distance effectively (θ = 152.9). Additionally, although both attachment avoidance and anxiety were associated with interpersonal distress (e = 0.55 and e = 0.66, respectively) and misanthropy (e = 0.30 and e = 0.49, respectively), attachment anxiety was associated with significantly more distress and misanthropy. Finally, attachment anxiety was uniquely associated with feelings of interpersonal potency (e = 0.10). Together, these findings suggest that attachment avoidance in romantic relationships does translate to general interpersonal functioning as anticipated, but this is not true for attachment anxiety. Implications and future directions will be discussed.