Cindy Hazan

Love and Work: An Attachment-Theoretical Perspective

The possibility that love and work in adulthood are functionally similar to attachment and exploration in infancy and early childhood was investigated. Key components of attachment theory—developed by Bowlby, A insworth, and others to explain the role of attachment in exploratory behavior —were translated into terms appropriate to adult love and work. The translation centered on the 3 major types of infant attachment and exploration identified by Ainsworth: secure, anxious/ambivalent, and avoidant. Two questionnaire studies indicated that relations between adult attachment type and work orientation are similar to attachment/exploration dynamics in infancy and early childhood, suggesting that the dynamics may be similar across the life span. Implications for research on the link between love and work are discussed, as are measurement problems and other issues related to future tests of an attachment-theoretical approach to the study of adults.

A Biased Overview of the Study of Love

The field of relationship research is currently witnessing an explosion of interest in romantic love. Several theories have been proposed to explain various features of love. This article summarizes some of these and argues that they can be integrated within an attachment-theoretical framework. In the course of the argument, love is conceptualized in terms of emotion theory and as a complex of behavioral systems, involving attachment, caregiving and sex. Although a great deal of research remains to be done, the attachment-theoretical approach to love already offers several advantages over rival approaches.

Coregulation, Dysregulation, Self-Regulation: An Integrative Analysis and Empirical Agenda for Understanding Adult Attachment, Separation, Loss, and Recovery

An integrative framework is proposed for understanding how multiple biological and psychological systems are regulated in the context of adult attachment relationships, dysregulated by separation and loss experiences, and, potentially, re-regulated through individual recovery efforts. Evidence is reviewed for a coregulatory model of normative attachment, defined as a pattern of interwoven physiology between romantic partners that results from the conditioning of biological reward systems and the emergence of felt security within adult pair bonds. The loss of coregulation can portend a state of biobehavioral dysregulation, ranging from diffuse psychophysiological arousal and disorganization to a full-blown (and highly organized) stress response. The major task for successful recovery is adopting a self-regulatory strategy that attenuates the dysregulating effects of the attachment disruption. Research evidence is reviewed across multiple levels of analysis, and the article concludes with a series of testable research questions on the interconnected nature of attachment, loss, and recovery processes.

Adoption as a natural experiment

Adoption provides a unique opportunity for the study of child development. Because adopted children are raised in families in which they have no genetic relationship with their parents, and possibly none with their siblings, they provide a rare opportunity to study the relative importance of genetic, shared environmental, and nonshared environmental influences on the development of child characteristics and behaviors. Because children are adopted from a variety of circumstances and at a wide range of ages, studies of adopted children and their families provide researchers the opportunity to examine the short- and long-term influences of a wide range of environments on childrens development. Because children are adopted into homes with a range of characteristics (e.g., multiracial homes), adoption provides the opportunity to study the range of influences of these homes on child development. Adoption research that focuses on each of these areas is reviewed in this article. We present conclusions about the value of adoption in psychological research and some reasons why many psychologists ignore the opportunities presented by studying adoptive families, as well as potential useful directions for future research with adopted children and their families.

Mental Representations of Attachment Figures Facilitate Recovery Following Upsetting Autobiographical Memory Recall

A growing literature shows that even the symbolic presence of an attachment figure facilitates the regulation of negative affect triggered by external stressors. Yet, in daily life, pernicious stressors are often internally generated--recalling an upsetting experience reliably increases negative affect, rumination, and susceptibility to physical and psychological health problems. The present research provides the first systematic examination of whether activating the mental representation of an attachment figure enhances the regulation of affect triggered by thinking about upsetting memories. Using 2 different techniques for priming attachment figure representations and 2 types of negative affect measures (explicit and implicit), activating the mental representation of an attachment figure (vs. an acquaintance or stranger) after recalling an upsetting memory enhanced recovery--eliminating the negative effects of the memory recall (Studies 1-3). In contrast, activating the mental representation of an attachment figure before recalling an upsetting memory had no such effect (Studies 1 and 2). Furthermore, activating the mental representation of an attachment figure after thinking about upsetting memories reduced negative thinking in a stream of consciousness task, and the magnitude of the attachment-induced affective recovery effects as assessed with explicit affect measures predicted mental and physical health in daily life (Study 3). Finally, a meta-analysis of the 3 studies (Study 4) showed that the regulatory benefits conferred by the mental representation of an attachment figure were weaker for individuals high on attachment avoidance. The implications of these findings for attachment, emotion regulation, and mental and physical health are discussed.

Crowding and Cognitive Development The Mediating Role of Maternal Responsiveness Among 36-Month-Old Children

Residential crowding in both U.S. and U.K. samples of 36-month-old children is related concurrently to the Bracken scale, a standard index of early cognitive development skills including letter and color identification, shape recognition, and elementary numeric comprehension. In the U.S. sample, these effects also replicate prospectively. Statistical controls for income, child gender, maternal age, and maternal education are incorporated throughout. In both samples the association between crowding and cognitive development are mediated by maternal responsiveness. Mothers in more crowded homes are less responsive to their children.

Working models of attachment and person perception processes.

This study investigated the effects of attachment working models on social perception processes. Participants estimated the number of behavioral instances they would require to confirm and disconfirm hypothetical others’ possession of various traits. The attachment dimension of avoidance was associated with a defensively conservative style of social perception. High scorers on avoidance required more evidence to make a positive judgment and also more evidence to reject a negative judgment. In contrast, the attachment dimension of anxiety was associated with a relatively impulsive and labile perceptional style. High scorers on anxiety tended to require less evidence to make both positive and negative judgments of others. Results are discussed in terms of their concordance with previous findings and their implications for research on attachment and social perception.

Recognizing and treating uncommon behavioral and emotional disorders in children and adolescents who have been severely maltreated: reactive attachment disorder.

This article explores reactive attachment disorder, a disorder that has been linked to severe and chronic maltreatment. The fundamental concepts of attachment theory are reviewed briefly, and the two types of behaviors associated with reactive attachment disorder in children and adolescents are discussed. Treatment strategies are explored, including the controversial holding or rebirthing strategies.

Broken Attachments: Relationship Loss From the Perspective of Attachment Theory

Loss is an integral part of close relationships. Death, estrangement, and geographical distance often separate us from those with whom we are close. Relationships are continually being constituted and dissolved. If we are truly to understand close relationships, we must not limit ourselves to studying them only during their constitutive phase but also throughout their natural cycle. As there is much to learn from studying attraction and relationship formation (e.g., Berscheid & Peplau, 1983; Berscheid & Walster, 1978), so there is much to learn from studying relationship dissolution (e.g., Duck, 1982; Hill, Rubin, & Peplau, 1976; Levinger, 1976; Weiss, 1975). As Lewin observed, it is when an entity is moving and changing that its dynamics reveal themselves most clearly (cited in Deutsch, 1954). And as Bowlby (1979) suggests in the title of one of his books, to understand human relationships we must examine both “the making and [the] breaking of affectional bonds.”

Dissociable patterns of brain activity for mentalizing about known others: a role for attachment

Abstract The human brain tracks dynamic changes within the social environment, forming and updating representations of individuals in our social milieu. This mechanism of social navigation builds an increasingly complex map of persons with whom we are familiar and form attachments to guide adaptive social behaviors. We examined the neural representation of known others along a continuum of attachment using fMRI. Heterosexual adults (N = 29, 16 females), in romantic relationships for more than 2 years, made trait judgments for a romantic partner, parent, close friend, familiar acquaintance and self-during scanning. Multivariate analysis, partial least squares, was used to identify whole-brain patterns of brain activation associated with trait judgments of known others across a continuum of attachment. Across conditions, trait judgments engaged the default network and lateral prefrontal cortex. Judgments about oneself and a partner were associated with a common activation pattern encompassing anterior and middle cingulate, posterior superior temporal sulcus, as well as anterior insula. Parent and close friend judgments engaged medial and anterior temporal lobe regions. These results provide novel evidence that mentalizing about known familiar others results in differential brain activity. We provide initial evidence that the representation of adult attachment is a distinguishing feature of these differences.