Love in the First Degree: Individual Differences in First-Person Pronoun Use and Adult Romantic Attachment Styles

Abstract

The current project brings together over 1,400 observations drawn from seven studies to examine relations between adult romantic attachment styles and pronoun use. In each study, participants provided autobiographical narratives from the romantic domain and completed measures assessing their attachment styles. Pronoun use in the resulting narrative material was quantified using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count. Across studies, anxious and avoidant attachment styles were found to relate positively with I-talk and negatively with we-talk, respectively. Furthermore, after accounting for a range of demographic (e.g., age) and psychological (e.g., neuroticism) covariates, the negative relation between avoidant attachment and we-talk remained significant. Thus, the pronouns individuals use when describing their romantic experiences provide indication of their attachment styles. As such, this project carries implications for the detection and diagnosis of romantic domain functioning.