Consistency and Specificity of Attachments to Parents, Friends, and Romantic Partners in Emerging Adulthood

ORCID
0000-0002-2528-4877
Affiliation
Department of Education and Psychology,Freie Universität Berlin , Germany
Bohn, Johannes;
ORCID
0000-0002-7949-0772
Affiliation
Psychologische Hochschule Berlin , Germany
Holtmann, Jana;
ORCID
0000-0001-6211-9304
Affiliation
Department of Psychology,Ruhr University Bochum , Germany
Luhmann, Maike;
GND
1036965090
ORCID
0000-0002-8143-3566
Affiliation
Department of Methodology and Evaluation Research,Friedrich Schiller University Jena , Germany
Koch, Tobias;
ORCID
0000-0001-8920-1412
Affiliation
Department of Education and Psychology,Freie Universität Berlin , Germany
Eid, Michael

The idea of a general working model of attachment suggests a high consistency among the attachments to different attachment figures. However, many empirical results show that attachments to different attachment figures differ substantially. In this study, 512 emerging adults rated their attachment quality to one parent, the romantic partner, and several friends over three measurement occasions. We used a multilevel structural equation model to examine the degree of consistency and different aspects of specificity. Attachment to parents was strongly associated with the attachment to friends (around r = .4) and less strongly with the attachment to romantic partners (around r = .3). However, most of the variance was specific to the different attachment figures. Attachments to different friends were more strongly correlated with each other than with the attachments to figures of other domains. The results hint at the existence of specific attachment patterns for every domain of attachment figures.

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License Holder: © 2022 Society for the Study of Emerging Adulthood and SAGE Publishing

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