Insecurity, stress, and symptoms of psychopathology: contrasting results from self-reports versus interviews of adult attachment

Attach Hum Dev. 2008 Mar;10(1):11-28. doi: 10.1080/14616730701868571.

Abstract

This report was designed to clarify links among self-reports of psychiatric symptomatology, stress, and adult attachment insecurity, as operationalized using measures drawn from both the developmental and social psychological literatures. Based on a sample of 160 college students, this study demonstrated that insecurity reflected in the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) was associated with self-reports of psychiatric symptomatology principally for individuals experiencing high levels of life stress (consistent with a diathesis-stress model) whereas self-reports of attachment-related avoidance and anxiety correlated robustly with psychopathology under conditions of both relatively high and low life stress (consistent with a risk model). Results provide further evidence that social psychological and developmental approaches to the assessment of adult attachment-related variation are associated with domains of adaptation central to Bowlby's account of human development in empirically distinct ways.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Anxiety / psychology*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Interpersonal Relations
  • Interview, Psychological
  • Male
  • Mental Disorders / psychology*
  • Object Attachment*
  • Parent-Child Relations
  • Self Disclosure
  • Stress, Psychological / psychology*
  • Students / psychology