Cindy Hazan & Phil Shaver 1987
AIMS: Hazan & Shaver were interested in John Bowlby’s idea that an infant’s first
attachment formed an internal working model - a template - for all future relationships.
They wanted to see if there was a correlation between the infant’s attachment type
and their future approach to romantic relationships.
PROCEDURE (METHOD): to test this Hazan & Shaver devised the ‘Love Quiz’ which consisted
of 2 components:-
- A measure of attachment type - a simple adjective checklist of childhood relationships
with parents and parents’ relationships with each other
- A love experience questionnaire which assessed individual’s beliefs about romantic
love - eg: whether it lasted forever, whether it could be found easily, how much
trust there was in a romantic relationship, etc
The Love Quiz was printed in local newspaper the Rocky Mountain News and readers
were asked to send in their responses.
Hazan & Shaver analysed the first 620 replies sent in from people aged from 14 to
82.They classified the respondents’ according to Mary Ainsworth’s
infant attachment types of secure, anxious-resistant and anxious-avoidant and looked
for corresponding adult love styles - viz:-
- Secure types described their love experiences as happy, friendly and trusting - emphasising
being able to accept their partner regardless of any faults - with such relationships
tending to be more enduring, with the initial passion reappearing from time to time
and for some ‘romantic love’ never fading.They were happy depending on others and
comfortable if others are dependent on them. They wereappy to be close to others.
- Anxious-resistant types experienced love as involving obsession, a desire for reciprocation,
emotional highs and lows, extreme sexual attraction and jealousy, and worry that
their partners didn’t really love them or might abandon them. Their desire for intense
closeness couild frighten others away.
- Anxious-avoidant types typically feared intimacy, emotional highs and lows, and jealousy
and believed they did not need love to be happy. They were uncomfortable being close
to and/or depending on others.
FINDINGS (RESULTS): Hazan & Shaver found a strikingly high correlation between the
infant attachment types and the adult romantic love styles.
CONCLUSIONS: Hazan & Shaver concluded that there was evidence to support the concept
of the inner working model having a life-long effect. However, they did concede that
not everyone stayed true to their infant attachment style and that some people did
change as they grew older.
CRITICISMS (EVALUATION): people were recording their memories of infant experience
and such memories may not always be accurate. Additionally the responders were self-selecting
and, therefore, the results may be subject to volunteer bias. Plus, the respondents
were self-reporting - and people do not always give truthful answers.
However, a number of studies have supported the Love Quiz findings - eg: Judith Feeney
& Patricia Noller (1990) found that securely-attached individuals had the most long-term
enduring romantic relationships while anxious-avoidant types had the most short-lived
and least-intense relationships. In a 4-month study of heterosexual relationships
among Canadian undergraduates Patrick Keelan, Karen Dion & Kenneth Dion (1994) found
that those with a secure attachment style expressed more satisfaction with and greater
commitment to the relationship and trusted their partner more.
Gerard McCarthy (1999) studied women whose attachment types had been recorded in
infancy and found:-
- Anxious-avoidant infants grew up to have the most difficulty in romantic relationships
- Anxious-resistant infants grew up to have the poorest relationships
- Securely-attached infants grew up to have the most successful romantic relationships
and friendships
Among undergraduates involved in a romantic relationship, there is also a weak but
significant tendency to be attracted to someone with an attachment style like your
own, according to Kelly Brennan & Phil Shaver (1995).
An alternative explanation for this apparent continuity lies in Jerome Kagan’s Temperament
Hypothesis (1984). Kagan noted that innate temperamental characteristics which made
infants ‘easy’ or ‘difficult’ had a serious impact on the quality of the mother-infant
relationship and thus the attachment type. These innate temperamental characteristics
would influence the individual throughout life and thus love relationships.
A trans-generational effect has been shown by Susan Sprecher, Rodney Cate & Lauren
Levin (1998). They compared the love styles of 2 sets of students, one whose parents
were divorced and one whose parents had stayed together. This second group was then
divided into those whose parents had happy marriages and those who didn’t. Amongst
the females with divorced parents and unhappily married parents, they were more likely
to have an avoidant attachment style and less likely to have a secure one. In terms
of John Lee’s love styles - see What is Love? - they were less likely to be Pragma,
Agape or Mania and generally had a less idealistic view of romantic love. Male participants
whose parents were divorced were more likely to show Eros as their preferred love
style - this tendency was even stronger amongst men whose parents were unhappily
married.
Hazan & Shaver repeated the Love Quiz in 1993 and again found strong evidence for
a correlation between infant attachment type and adult love style - though the correlation
was not quite as strong this time. (In total the two Love Quiz studies involved 1200
participants.)
|t is important to bear in mind that Hazan & Shaver only established a correlation.
Therefore, cause-and-effect cannot be assumed from their work.
