Definition Of Attachment Research Articles

The Association Between Companion Animal Attachment and Depression: A Systematic Review

ABSTRACT There is significant literature related to companion animal attachment and depression, but to date, there has not been a systematic review of it. The aims of this systematic review were threefold: (1) to compare depression outcomes between pet and non-pet owners; (2) to identify the prevalence of how attachment is operationalized within the human–pet relationships literature, as it is defined in two distinct, divergent ways: as an attachment bond or as an attachment orientation; and (3) to review and synthesize the existing literature related to the association between pet attachment and depression. A search of five databases (Pubmed, Medline, Web of Science, Embase, and PsycInfo) was conducted in January 2024 to locate articles (journal articles, dissertations) focusing on pets, attachment, and depression or depressive symptoms that met predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. In total, 40 studies were included in the review. Eighteen studies compared depression outcomes in pet owners and non-pet owners; of these, 14 found no significant difference in depression between the two groups, while four found that pet owners were significantly less depressed than non-pet owners. Most studies measuring attachment bond revealed a positive or non-significant relationship with depression, while the majority of studies measuring attachment orientation indicate that higher levels of secure attachment are negatively associated with depression, while higher levels of attachment insecurity are typically positively associated with depression. We conclude that the field needs more clarification regarding the definition of attachment so that meaningful conclusions regarding the impact of pet attachment on mental health can be drawn.

Universality claim of attachment theory: Children’s socioemotional development across cultures

The first part of this paper reviews the basic tenets of attachment theory with respect to differences in cultural socialization strategies. In one strategy infants have the lead, and the social environment is responsive to the infant’s wishes and preferences. In another strategy the caregivers—children or adults—are experts who know what is best for a baby without exploring his or her mental states. Accordingly, the definition of attachment is conceived as a negotiable emotional bond or a network of responsibilities. Attachment theory represents the Western middle-class perspective, ignoring the caregiving values and practices in the majority of the world. However, attachment theory claims universality in all its components. Since the claim of universality implies moral judgments about good and bad parenting, ethical questions need to be addressed. These issues are discussed in the second part of the paper. It is first demonstrated that sensitive responsiveness in attachment theory is built on a different concept of the person and self than concepts of good caregiving in many rural subsistence-based farming families. Evaluating one system with the standards of another ignores different realities and different value systems. The common practice of large-scale interventions in rural subsistence-based contexts promoting Western-style parenting strategies without knowing the local culture positions a false understanding of scientific evidence against cultural knowledge. This practice is unethical. Diversity needs to be recognized as the human condition, and the recognition of diversity is an obligation for better science as well as for improving people’s lives.

Commentary: Psychosocial screening and assessment in oncology and palliative care settings.

Depression and anxiety are common in patients with cancer and psychosocial screening in oncology and palliative care settings is suggested as a means to reduce emotional distress in cancer situations (Grassi et al., 2014). In their study, Grassi and colleagues report the results of a review investigating factors associated with depression and anxiety in cancer patients. As regards psychosocial screening, the findings are reassuring: assessment of distress enables the practitioner to attend to symptomatology, interpersonal dynamics and cultural aspects of distress, which captures distress as a multifaceted phenomenon. In particular, focusing on the interpersonal aspects, for example attachment, is highlighted as a way to detect distress. There is a long-standing tradition of attachment research within developmental and clinical psychology, but in the field of the psychosocial dimensions of cancer, studies of attachment are of only rather recent of origin. Introducing established attachment measures into health psychology seems, prima facie, a promising avenue. However, important theoretical and conceptual knowledge derived from investigating adult attachment in the contexts of clinical and developmental psychology has been omitted in the transition to the setting of health psychology. Ultimately, this has led to an uncertainty of the fundamental nature of attachment, as is also pointed out by Grassi et al. (2014) in their evaluation of attachment research in the fields of oncology and palliative care. They avoid conceptualizing and defining attachment and important questions therefore remain; to which definition of attachment do the authors adhere? How do they conceptualize attachment? What is the convergence between their definition and the conceptualization? Grassi and colleagues state that “the way in which the patient has experienced early relations with caregiving figures in the past relates to her view of herself and to the expectation (…).” The description of attachment is relevant to the understanding of the phenomenon, and the quotation above indicates that Grassi et al. consider past experiences to be crucial to the attachment construct. They emphasize past relationships in their description of attachment and they make reference to a self-report instrument for measuring attachment, namely the Experience in Close Relationships questionnaire (ECR). Historically, attachment research has split into two schools using two distinct methodological approaches, i.e., the social psychology tradition and the development of parent-child relations from the child psychology tradition (Bouthillier et al., 2002; Ravitz et al., 2010). Attachment measures involving self-report questionnaires such as the ECR (Brennan et al., 1998) and the Relationship Questionnaire (RQ) (Bartholomew and Horowitz, 1991) stem from the social psychological tradition and the aim is to assess adult attachment in the context of current close relationships with a spouse, a relative, or a close friend. Adult attachment, as measured with self-report questionnaires, varies according to the context in which it is measured and it expresses attachment within thoughts and feelings in current close relationships (Brennan et al., 1998). In contrast, adult attachment measured with the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) originates from the child psychology tradition and it assesses the organization and the processing of attachment experiences in childhood (Hesse, 2008; Ravitz et al., 2010). Given that self-report measurements of attachment and attachment as measured with the AAI are intended to assess the same construct, then the two methodologies could be expected to show at least a moderate association. However, research shows that they fail to correlate (de Haas et al., 1994; Crowell et al., 1999; Bouthillier et al., 2002; Creasey and Ladd, 2005). The distinction between attachment measured with the AAI and attachment as measured with self-reports is important, because, in fact, the two approaches assess two distinct constructs. Therefore, it is necessary to define attachment consistently with the attachment measure being used. Little can be learnt about attachment and psychosocial distress if there is lack of convergence between the measurement instrument employed (e.g., self-report questionnaires) and the description of the phenomenon (e.g., thoughts and feelings in current close relationships or the organization of experiences of child-parent attachment). The evaluation of attachment research in Grassi et al. (2014) is encouraging, but it is also problematic since it omits important distinctions and specifications of the attachment phenomenon. These shortcomings may consequently lead investigators collectively to adhere to an imprecise definition of adult attachment and this in turn will lead to the impact of attachment research within the field of health psychology being considerably diminished. The psychological legacy of attachment research as an approach to improving the health, well-being and rehabilitation of patients and families, needs to continue its development. The challenge for clinicians, service providers and administrative authorities will be to build up the clarity of the phenomenon such that research will be able to establish what attachment is all about.

Attachment and Culture

This article proposes to reconceptualize attachment theory as a culture-sensitive framework. First the seminal contribution of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth are recognized in proposing a new paradigm for understanding children’s development, synthesizing the interdisciplinary knowledge of relationship formation present during the 1950s (Bowlby) and developing a fieldwork approach in combination with quasi-experimental procedures in the laboratory (Ainsworth). It is argued that students of attachment theory have expanded the framework with respect to the intergenerational transmission and the organizational nature of attachment, relations with psychopathology and clinical applications, and its psychophysiological foundation. It is further argued that attachment theorists were not responsive to developments in evolutionary sciences and cultural/anthropological approaches of parenting and child development. From an evolutionary perspective, contextual variability is crucial to meet the purpose of adaptation. It is demonstrated that the assumptions of monotropy, the conception of stranger anxiety, as well as the definition of attachment in mainstream attachment research are in line with the conception of psychological autonomy, adaptive for Western middle-class, but deviate from the cultural values of many non-Western and mainly rural ecosocial environments. In the concluding paragraph, a strategy is proposed for an empirical research program that would contribute to the cultural foundation of attachment.

The relationship imperative: Arguments for a broad definition of attachment.

The relationship imperative: Arguments for a broad definition of attachment.

Confidence in protection: Arguments for a narrow definition of attachment.

Confidence in protection: Arguments for a narrow definition of attachment.

Healthy and Unhealthy Friendship and Hostility between Ex-Spouses

Using two indicators of postdivorce attachment, preoccupation and hostility, this article distinguishes between divorced survey respondents' (n = 232) healthy and unhealthy friendship and between healthy and unhealthy hostility toward the ex-spouse. The preoccupation indicator ranges from low (low scores) to high (high scores), whereas the hostility indicator ranges from high friendship (low scores) to high hostility (high scores). Respondents with low preoccupation and high friendship have significantly higher emotional well-being (M = 46.0, SD = 7.6) than those with high preoccupation and high friendship (M = 31.6, SD = 11.8). Respondents with low preoccupation and high hostility have significantly higher well-being (M = 47.4, SD = 9.0) than those with high preoccupation and high hostility (M = 38.1, SD = 6.8). Low preoccupation appears to be crucial to healthy postdivorce relationships, whether friendly or hostile. These quantitative findings confirm previously published qualitative findings based on research interviews and clinical cases. Key Words: former spouses, friendship, hostility, postdivorce. Though the divorce rate in the United States has leveled off and even decreased slightly, every year approximately 1.3 million couples divorce (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1991). Former spouses, as well as their children, face major changes and adjustments in their lives. Recent interest in the fostering of healthy, ongoing, postdivorce relationships between children and both of their parents has led to increased interest in the relationship between the former spouses themselves. Most research on postdivorce relationships has emphasized hostility between former spouses, on one hand, and long-lasting bonds between them, on the other (Isaacs & Leon, 1988). In the interest of identifying healthy postdivorce relationships that could benefit former spouses, this article distinguishes between healthy and unhealthy friendship and between healthy and unhealthy hostility toward the ex-spouse using two indicators of postdivorce attachment: (a) preoccupation and (b) hostility. In the following review, I consider postdivorce relationships between ex-spouses, their prevalence and intensity, how they are measured, and associations among them and individual variables, such as emotional well-being, gender, and parental, employment, and remarriage status. POSTDIVORCE ATTACHMENT Attachment as a Concept Bowlby's (1969, 1973) and Ainsworth's (1982) original concept identifies both secure (healthy) and anxious (unhealthy) attachment between infants and their mothers. Both securely and anxiously attached infants seek contact with their mothers. Securely attached infants use their mothers as a safe base from which to explore the world and other people. Anxiously attached infants cling to their mothers, express prolonged distress when separated from their mothers, and tend not to explore the world and other people. Numerous divorce scholars have conceptualized attachment to the ex-spouse in terms similar to anxious infant attachment (see Kitson & Holmes, 1992, for a recent review). Investigators have defined postdivorce attachment in terms of separation distress (Parkes, 1973); separation anxiety and ambivalent feelings about the ex-spouse, such as missing the partner and wishes for reconciliation that oscillate with anger and hostility (Weiss, 1976); preoccupation with or intrusive thoughts about the exspouse or marriage (Berman, 1985; Tschann, Johnston, & Wallerstein, 1989); bereavement, mourning, or loss (Hazan & Shaver, 1992; Kitson, 1982, Kitson & Holmes, 1992); anger, blame, and the inability to achieve a balanced view of the ex-spouse (Tschann et al., 1989), as well as dependency and counterdependency (Johnston & Campbell, 1988). These definitions of attachment between ex-spouses, although not contradictory, are not synonymous. Nonetheless, rarely have investigators examined healthy or secure attachments between ex-spouses, an omission that this study attempts to remedy. …

Issues in the measurement of attachment in non-human primates

In studying socialization, attachment, or mother-infant interactions, several conceptual and measurement issues arise. The purpose of the present paper is to discuss some of the theoretical issues important in the study of attachment and to consider the implications of these theoretical issues in their empirical translation with non-human primates. The first issue that arises is the problem of a theoretical definition of attachment that (a) specifies the nature of attachment and (b) leads to a straightforward operational definition. A second issue is the incorporation of developmental change within a theoretical framework. Theoretical conceptualizations of attachment must consider the issue of the nature of the developmental progression of attachment, specifically addressing questions of quantitative and/or qualitative change. Related to this are issues of response stability, consistency, and developmental continuity. In a similar fashion, issues related to phylogenetic continuity should be considered, especially in the light of obtained species differences in the manifestation of attachment. Specific data from the macaque literature on attachment are considered in the context of the above issues.