Adult Attachment Nad Stategic Relational Communication Essay

, Research Paper

Adult Attachment and Strategic Relational

Communication: Love Schemas and Affinity Seeking

According to attachment theory, the emotional bonds that infants form with their caregivers serve as the blueprints for the way people view themselves and others and they affect the way people act in their adult relationships, (Bowlby, 1982). John Bowlby was one of the first pioneers to advance on the attachment theory perspective. He was greeted with resistance and skepticism early on. Now, attachment theory concepts are widely known and accepted in developmental psychology, (West and Sheldon-Keller, 1994).

The article I’m critiquing involves attachment theory, the six love schemas and how they affect adult relationships. In this paper, I will be looking at those concepts through 4 sections: the literary review, the methods section, the results of the study, and the discussion section.

LITERARY REVIEW

The main idea of this article, Adult Attachment and Strategic Relational Communication: Love Schemas and Affinity Seeking, is that attachment theory begins with attachment styles as an infant. It then begins to play with the idea that attachment theory is based on people’s positive or negative self-esteem. People who are secure are comfortable forming close and intimate relationships because they have positive beliefs about themselves and others. Dismissing and fearful types avoid intimate relationships because they have negative perceptions about themselves and others, (Bachman & Zakahi, 2000).

This conceptual framework is widely used to describe attachment theory and its sub-points. Those with an attachment theory perspective believe that the attachment system is an independent behavioral system, equivalent in function to other drive-behavioral systems such as feeding, mating, and exploration, (Sperling & Berman, 1994). According to West & Sheldon-Keller, most adults plan their lives on the basis of an anticipated future with a special other in the expectation of finding security in a permanent relationship. This places one of the emphases of attachment theory upon the search for security and implies that not all attachment relationships are secure. Consistent with this, West & Sheldon-Keller state that adults seek relational proximity to a particular person (just as children do) which, if found, promotes, enhances, and restores security. In general, the childhood origins of attachment styles should still be evident to some extent in adults, because the influence of parents or caregivers exerts itself in most people’s lives for many years, (Bowlby, 1980). In addition to intensity and security, the ease with which an individual develops attachment relationships appears to be quite important in discussing the correlation between how people form relationships from the beginning and why they are formed, (Sperling & Berman).

Past research by Hatfield and Rapson shows that they developed a unified theory of adult attachment that consists of six attachment styles they labeled love schemas, (Bachman & Zakahi). They also suggested that love schemas are based on two factors: the extent to which people are comfortable being emotionally close and their willingness to invest emotionally in a romantic relationship.

The six schemas are the secure types, the clingy types, the skittish types, the fickle types, the casual types, and the uninterested. These are the schemas that are learned from infancy on in accordance with how a person responds to their caregiver.

A lot of the authors researched for these critiques seem to agree with the study done by Bachman & Zakahi. There is much support for the six love schemas that are being utilized.

When thinking about attachment and loss, this research seems more than relevant, it seems vital. Adult attachment styles can be linked to loneliness and even depression. In all reality, studying adult attachment could lead to cures for depression and other such diseases.

METHOD

According to past research done by Bartholomew and Horowitz, this particular hypothesis for the attachment theory perspective predicts that people with different love schemas will communicate in ways that reflect their predisposition towards being comfortable or uncomfortable with closeness and/or intimacy, (Bachman & Zakahi). The hypothesis seems to fit well with the conceptual framework because they both relate back to the caregiver. How the caregiver treats the infant or toddler and how that child responds back is a learned phenomenon that stays with the person into adulthood.

To elaborate, those scoring high on the secure and clingy attachment scales seem comfortable with closeness and are eager to be in relationships. Therefore, scores for secure and clingy types should be positively correlated with the different affinity seeking strategies. Those scoring high on the skittish, casual and uninterested scales are generally more comfortable with independence and less interested in relationships. Therefore, they should be less likely to engage in affinity seeking.

The hypotheses are as follows:

Hypothesis 1: Scores on the secure schema will be positively related to the likelihood of using affinity-seeking strategies.

Hypothesis 2: Scores on the clingy schema will be positively related to the likelihood of using aff