Adult attachment and sexual behavior

Abstract

The relations between adult attachment processes and sexuality were examined in a community sample of 792 young adults (327 men and 465 women) from the Niagara region of Canada. Participants completed questionnaires that included Simpson's (1990) measure of adult attachment, self-reported physical attractiveness, erotophilia, and a variety of sexual behavior measures (e.g., number of sexual partners, age of first sexual experience, frequency of sexual behaviors in the past year, whether an affair had occurred in the past year, and consistent condom usage). The sexuality measures were factor analyzed to extract common factors. The results were modest, but a number of significant relationships between sexuality and attachment were observed. For example, people scoring higher on a secure attachment index perceived themselves as more physically attractive, whereas people scoring higher on an anxious attachment index perceived themselves as less physically attractive, had an early first intercourse (and more lifetime partners), more infidelity, and took more sexual precautions (e.g., condom usage). The results were generally stronger in women, with most of the attachment/sexuality associations in the full sample being driven by the results in women. Implications for understanding sexual variability, including high-risk sexual behavior, are discussed.

The Causal Effects of Relational Security and Insecurity on Condom Use Attitudes and Acquisition Behavior

“…As shown in Study 2, this was due to security and anxiety priming causing participants to perceive sexual partners as less of a threat to their sexual health. Although the experimental designs of these studies makes them an important contribution to the attachment and sexuality literature, the meta-analytic consistency of the findings for the effects of attachment on condom use attitudes, across the three studies, makes them particularly valuable, given the conflicting findings obtained from previous correlational studies (e.g., Bogaert & Sadava, 2002;Feeney et al, 2000;Kershaw et al, 2007).…”

“…Much of the previous research in this area, such as the work of colleagues (1999, 2000) and Bogaert and Sadava (2002), produced seemingly inconsistent findings, as some studies found anxiety to predict more negative condom use attitudes, whereas other studies found that security predicted more negative condom use attitudes. Our research suggests that both attachment security and anxiety can negatively impact condom use attitudes.…”

“…One possible explanation for this association, advanced by Feeney et al, is that anxiously attached people engage in risky sex and hold such attitudes because they fear that noncompliance with their partners' wishes will jeopardize their relationships (see Davis, Shaver, & Vernon, 2004). These findings, however, seem at odds with findings of a positive association between secure attachment style and negative attitudes towards condom use (Bogaert & Sadava, 2002), or between avoidant attachment style and negative attitudes towards condom use (Kershaw et al, 2007). The inconsistencies in this literature could be on account of a number of factors, such as the use of different scales to measure attachment, the use of ad-hoc measures of condom use attitudes, and the study of different populations.…”

“…Participants, online, were exposed to either an attachment (secure, anxious, avoidant) or a control prime, via guided imagery, and were then asked to complete questionnaires assessing, among other things, attitudes toward condom use. Correlational research on attachment and condom use attitudes has supported multiple permutations of associations between attachment style and condom use preferences; some investigations have found that anxiety is associated with negative evaluations of condom use (Feeney et al, 1999(Feeney et al, , 2000Strachman & Impett, 2009), some have found security is associated with negative evaluations of condom use (Bogaert & Sadava, 2002), and others have found that both anxiety and avoidance are associated with negative evaluations of condom use (Kershaw et al, 2007).…”

“…Our findings regarding attachment anxiety are in line with the robust evidence showing that attachment anxiety is associated with higher symptomatology, and worse health (see Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007a, for a review). The correlational (Bogaert & Sadava, 2002) and experimental (Studies 1 and 2) findings regarding attachment security, however, are not in line with the extensive literature on the benefits to health and wellbeing associated with attachment security (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007b). Put another way, not using a condom following security priming, which can have deleterious effects on one's sexual health, makes sense considering the activation of a positive model of the other (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991), but makes less sense in light of the beneficial outcomes of security priming in general and with respect to health-relevant behavior specifically (Gillath et al, 2008;Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007b).…”