Attachment theory is a popular theory regarding the psychological development of infants. It postulates that the behavior of a parent toward an infant leads that infant to develop an "attachment style" which defines a self-model and a model of relationships with others. Three different attachment styles have been identified: secure, anxious/ambivalent, and avoidant (anxious/ambivalent and avoidant types are grouped as "insecure"). Infants with a secure attachment type have had good parenting (i.e. having their needs taken care of immediately) and are happier in general than those with insecure attachment types. Those with avoidant attachment types have been the victims of parental neglect, and exhibit detachment from the parents. Anxious/ambivalent infants are those who have received mixed signals from parents, and are uncertain of their place. These infants generally cry often and resist attempts to be soothed. Due to these characteristics, connecting attachment theory to adult behavior might suggest that secure adults form trusting love and friendship relationships, avoidant adults fear intimacy, and anxious/ambivalent adults are uncertain of their commitment and may become obsessively jealous. Also, those with insecure attachment styles may have more negative self-images as well as negative models of relationships.

Deirdre Williams and Thomas Schill conducted a study (1994) exploring the correlation between insecure attachment styles, self-defeating personality type (in which the subject acts in a way detrimental to their happiness), and fear of intimacy, dependence, and being rejected or unloved in romantic relationships. Seventy-nine men and seventy-nine women enrolled in a university psychology class voluntarily completed a series of scales and measures assessing personality, attachment style, and love attitudes. The subjects exhibiting more characteristics of self-defeating personality type were found to have difficulty depending on others in love relationship, to treat love as a game, and to fear abandonment in relationships, as assessed by the Love Attitudes Scale. Those scoring high on the Self-defeating Personality Scale also tended to view love as obsessive and preoccupying. These subjects also consistently exhibited insecure attachments styles (anxious/ambivalent and avoidant). These results suggest that those with insecure attachment style are more likely to exhibit masochistic, self-defeating behaviors in their love relationships.

This study does not differentiate between anxious/ambivalent and avoidant attachment styles, nor does it address secure attachment styles or relationships other than love relationships. There is a possible self-report problem as well. However, the study supports the idea that those with insecure attachment styles have more negative self models as well as more difficulty in relationships.

Hazan and Shaver (1987) hypothesized that models of the self and relationships, and the love experience, would differ based on attachment style. They published a questionnaire dealing in a newspaper and used the first 620 responses in their study (205 male, 415 female). The questionnaire asked about the subject's feelings about the relationship, accumulated data about the relationship (duration, whether it was current or past, etc.), and asked about the subject's childhood to determine attachment style. Hazan and Shaver's hypotheses were supported by their data. Subjects with a secure attachment style reported that they experienced love as trusting, happy, and friendly, and the duration of their relationships was twice as long as those of the insecure attachment style subjects. The anxious/ambivalent subjects reported love as involving obsession, emotional highs and lows, jealousy, desire for union, and extreme sexual attraction. Avoidant subjects reported a fear of intimacy, emotional highs and lows, and jealousy. Secure subjects displayed a more positive model of relationships, expecting some loves to last forever, while avoidant subjects often reported that they did not believe love exists; ambivalent subjects reported that they fell in and out of love very easily. Hazan and Shaver then conducted a second study to correct some of the errors in their first and to determine more about self models. For this study, their subjects were freshman in a psychology class at a university, and they were asked to complete a questionnaire similar to the first, but with additional self-descriptive items. The results confirmed those of the first study. The new questions provided the expected results: secure subjects thought of themselves as easy to get along with, while anxious subjects were distrustful of the goodness of others, and avoidant subjects were uncertain of their own worth.

The nature of the studies had a self-selecting group of subjects (those who chose to respond to the newspaper questionnaire), and the results may therefore have been skewed by self-report. Overall, the results corroborate the results of the Williams/Schill study, and add to them. It can be concluded from these results that adults with secure attachment styles have positive views of themselves and relationships, that avoidant adults fear intimacy and have negative views of themselves, and that anxious/ambivalent adults may be obsessive about their relationships and fall in and out of love easily, implying a negative view of relationships.

In 1999, Gerard McCarthy carried out a study to fill in some of the gaps previous studies on love as an attachment process had left open. He explored attachment style in friendships as well as romantic relationships, used an investigatory interview to determine the subject's history of relationships over the previous five years to rectify self-report problems in other studies, and examined the relationship between attachment style and psychosocial functioning in groups other than the typical sample of college students. McCarthy's subjects were forty women with a mean age of 36 years who were involved in previous studies and were known to have experienced poor parenting in childhood. They completed a series of measures assessing attachment style, personality functioning, self-esteem, and depression, and were interviewed about their childhood. The secure subjects had positive love relationships, while the avoidant subjects had significantly less positive results. The secure subjects also had positive friendship relationships, while the ambivalent subjects had the most friendship problems. Those with insecure attachment types were more likely to have cohabited with a "deviant" (someone who has alcohol or drug problems or engages in criminal behavior), and scored lower on the self-esteem measure. A group of subjects scoring high on both ambivalence and avoidance were found to have more problems in love relationships and friendship relationships than any women with a single attachment style, and were also much more likely to have cohabited with a deviant. These women also displayed higher ratings of negative mood on the Beck Depression Index than the women with a single attachment style.

This study corrected for self-report errors by choosing subjects who were known to have experienced poor parenting and investigating their histories. However, the study only examines women, and the percentage of subjects exhibiting anxious/ambivalent attachment styles may not have been large enough to draw specific conclusions about their group. Overall, the results again corroborated the results of the other studies, and added information about self models and friendship relationships. It can be concluded from this study that those with insecure attachment types are more likely to exhibit self-destructive behavior in relationships. The data suggest that women with insecure attachment styles have more negative self models, and that anxious/ambivalent types have the most difficulties in friendship and avoidant types have the most difficulties in love relationships. Women exhibiting both ambivalent and avoidant attachment styles appeared to have the more negative results in all areas, indicating that they have the least positive self model and the most difficulties in love and friendship relationships.

It can be seen that the attachment styles developed in infancy can be mapped to adult behavior in friendship and love relationships, as well as self-image. Adults with secure attachment styles tend to be happier and more positively oriented in general, both with regard to the self and others, while anxious/ambivalent adults have difficulty maintaining relationships, and especially have difficulties with obsession in love relationships. Avoidant adults tend to have more difficulties in friendship relationships and have the most negative self models of all the groups except those exhibiting both avoidant and ambivalent attachment types. Adults with insecure attachment types are more likely to be self-destructive in relationships. Overall, attachment theory appears to be a good measure of adult models of self and relationships.

Hazan, Cindy, and Philip Shaver. "Romantic Love Conceptualized as an Attachment Process." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 52 (1987): 511-524

McCarthy, Gerard. "Attachment Style and Adult Love Relationships and Friendships: A Study of a Group of Women at Risk of Experiencing Relationships Difficulties." British Journal of Medical Psychology 72 (1999): 305-321

Williams, Dierdre, and Thomas Schill. "Adult Attachment, Love Styles, and Self-Defeating Personality Characteristics." Psychological Reports 75 (1994): 31-34