Do life events lead to enduring changes in adult attachment styles? A naturalistic longitudinal investigation.

Do life events lead to enduring changes in adult attachment styles? A naturalistic longitudinal investigation. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2020 Aug 13;: Authors: Fraley RC, Gillath O, Deboeck PR Abstract Research has shown that a variety of life events are associated with changes in adult attachment styles. What is unknown, however, is the extent to which those changes are transient or enduring. To investigate this issue, we followed a sample of over 4,000 people in a multiwave longitudinal study in which people naturalistically experienced a variety of life events (e.g., starting new relationships, changing jobs, average n across events = 392). This allowed us to examine people's attachment trajectories before (Mwaves = 6.51) and after (Mwaves = 8.04) specific life events took place, for spans of time ranging from 6 months to 40 (M = 23 months). We found that half of the life events we studied were associated with immediate changes in attachment styles. However, on average, people tended to revert back to levels of security similar to those that would be expected on the basis of their preevent trajectories. Nonetheless, the average person changed in enduring ways in response to a quarter of the events we studied, suggesting that some experiences lead to enduring changes in attachment. Moreover, there were considerable individual differences in the extent to which people changed: Even in cases in which the average person did not show endurin...
Source: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: J Pers Soc Psychol Source Type: research