Individual differences in adult attachment: Disentangling two assessment traditions

Abstract

The goal of this paper was to disentangle the contributions of type of measurement and relational domain to the lack of concordance between adult attachment measures. Eighty-six college students completed the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) and self-reported measures of attachment security adapted to their relationships with four different relational partners. Results showed that whereas the AAI main dimensions were unrelated to self-reports relative to any partner, reports of attachment security with different partners were interrelated. Further, very few of the AAI State of Mind scales related to self-reported attachment security, but the AAI Experience scales did relate to self-reports in a theoretically consistent manner. Finally, the AAI scales of Idealization and Lack of Recall correlated positively with self-reported attachment when controlling for experiences reported on the AAI. The results suggest that a fundamental distinction between adult attachment measures could be the degree of automaticity of the constructs tapped, and that attachment self-reports may be biased by defensive information-processing strategies among dismissing individuals.