The relation of insecure attachment states of mind and romantic attachment styles to adolescent aggression in romantic relationships

Abstract

The relation of attachment states of mind and self reported attachment relationship styles to romantic partner aggression was examined in a community sample of 93 adolescents. Higher levels of insecure-preoccupied and insecure-dismissing states of mind, as assessed by the Adolescent Attachment Interview at age 14, were predictive, respectively, of perpetration and victimization of psychological aggression in romantic relationships four years later. Partners' romantic attachment anxiety was linked to both psychological and physical aggression perpetration in romantic relationships. Results are interpreted as suggesting the value of assessing aggression in adolescent romantic relationships in the context of broader patterns of regulation of affect and behavior via the attachment system. Keywords insecure attachment; partner aggression; romantic relationships; adolescence; working models As attachment research has developed, two approaches to understanding and assessing attachment-related affect and cognitions have emerged. One approach is generally utilized in the social and personality psychology literature, and places a focus on self-reported thoughts and feelings of self and others in the romantic context (Hazan & Shaver, 1987;Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991). The other approach is generally emphasized in developmental psychology, and utilizes attachment interviews to assess internal representations of attachment based on the coherence and consistency of their description of early caregiver experiences (Furman, Simon, Shaffer, & Bouchey, 2002;Furman & Wehner, 1994;George, Kaplan & Main, 1996). Although interview techniques that tap mental representations of relationships have shown great value, particularly in beginning to counter social-desirability biases from self-report data, (Furman et al, 2002;Jacobvitz, Curran, & Moller, 2002;Main. Hesse, & Goldwyn, 2008), individuals' explicit and consciously-reportable expectations about intimate relationships are also likely to have important meaning in understanding social behavior.Attachment styles that tap self-reported behaviors and expectations in the romantic context might be more directly related to maladaptive relationship dynamics because these measures are romantic relationship-specific. Recent findings from both a recent meta-analysis and additional study have demonstrated that the empirical overlap between interview based attachment representations and self reported romantic attachment styles is only trivial to Correspondence concerning this study should be sent to the first author at Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Box 400400, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4400 (erinmiga@virginia.edu).. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptAttach Hum Dev. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2010 September 1. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript small (Fortuna & Roisman, 2008;Roisman et al., 2007), suggesting that each tradition of attachment research captures relatively independent aspects of cognition and affect in a...

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