\n<\/p>\n
We come into the world screaming and vulnerable\u2014entirely dependent on adult caregivers to keep us safe and teach us how to connect with others. The nature of these earliest relationships influences how we behave towards others and see the world long after we\u2019ve grown\u2014but in more complex and nuanced ways than researchers previously thought, according to the results of a large, decades-long study examining how the quality of children\u2019s interactions with parents and close peers went on to influence their relationships in adulthood.<\/p>\n
In particular, early dynamics with mothers predicted future attachment styles for all the primary relationships in participants\u2019 lives, including with their parents, best friends and romantic partners, the study found. \u201cPeople who felt closer to their mothers and had less conflict with their mothers in childhood tended to feel more secure in all of their relationships in adulthood,\u201d says Keely Dugan, an assistant professor of social personality psychology at the University of Missouri and lead author of the study, which was published in October in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. \u201cThat\u2019s a really striking finding because it demonstrates the enduring impact of that first person who is supposed to be there for you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Early childhood friends also played a strong role in predicting how participants approached their future close friendships\u2014and their romantic connections. \u201cWhen you have those first friendships at school, that\u2019s when you practice give-and-take dynamics,\u201d Dugan says. \u201cRelationships in adulthood then mirror those dynamics.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The idea that earliest relationships have an outsized impact on our lives was popularized in psychology by Sigmund Freud. British psychiatrist John Bowlby later incorporated some core Freudian elements to create attachment theory, which helps explain variations in how people approach close relationships. \u201cSome people are quite comfortable depending on others, opening up to them and using them as a secure base, whereas other people lack that confidence and trust,\u201d says the new study\u2019s co-author R. Chris Fraley, a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.<\/p>\n
Researchers today define attachment styles by where people fall along two dimensions, each shaped by early experiences with caregivers. The first, attachment anxiety, measures your level of confidence in the availability and responsiveness of those you are close to. People high in attachment anxiety might have more intense fears of abandonment or need for reassurance. The second factor, attachment avoidance, involves how comfortable you feel opening up to others and depending on them for support. Those high in avoidance may believe that people cannot be counted on or trusted, so they avoid asking for help or emotional support\u2014even if they need it. A relationship with high attachment anxiety, avoidance or both is defined as more insecure, while a relationship that is low in both attachment anxiety and avoidance is considered to be secure: \u201cYou feel comfortable and close to the other person, you trust them to be there for you, and you feel supported,\u201d Dugan says.<\/p>\n
It can be difficult to study exactly how early relationships go on to influence attachment style, though, because people\u2019s retrospective reports of what happened to them in childhood are skewed by memory failings and emotional and cognitive biases, Dugan notes. Of the relatively few studies that have examined associations between early caregiving experiences and adult attachment styles, she adds, all have focused almost exclusively on a single early relationship: the maternal one.<\/p>\n
To more deeply understand how early relationships with a wider variety of people impact attachment styles, Dugan, Fraley and their colleagues turned to a landmark longitudinal study of 1,364 children and their families from around the U.S. It began when the children were infants and ended when they were 15 years old. Once the young participants were old enough to speak, they were surveyed about the quality of their relationships with their fathers, mothers and best friends. Researchers also surveyed participants\u2019 primary caregivers\u2014who were mostly their mothers\u2014and observed them interacting with their children. That study showed robust evidence that early experiences with caregivers matter for social development.<\/p>\n
Between 2018 and 2022, 705 of the original participants, who by then were 26 to 31 years old, agreed to a follow-up study to collect information about their current relationships with their parents, best friends and romantic partners. For those 705 participants, Dugan and her colleagues analyzed associations between the quality of early relationships and later attachment styles in adulthood. They found several notable patterns. First, a person\u2019s relationship with their mother tended to set the stage for their later attachment style in general, as well as for their specific approaches to individual relationships with friends, romantic partners and fathers. For instance, people who had more conflict with their mothers, were less close to their mothers or had mothers who were reportedly harsher and showed less warmth during childhood and adolescence tended to feel more insecure in their adult relationships.<\/p>\n
The researchers didn\u2019t find many associations between participants\u2019 relationships with their fathers and their future attachment styles\u2014perhaps because most identified their mother as their primary caregiver. \u201cThis cohort\u2019s first assessment was in 1991, and even though the burden of caregiving still heavily falls on mothers, fathers were even less involved back then, on average,\u201d Dugan says. \u201cIn cases where a father was the primary caregiver, the results might be flipped\u2014but we don\u2019t have that data.\u201d<\/p>\n
Early experiences with close friends, though, were an even stronger predicter than maternal relationships for determining participants\u2019 approach to\u2014specifically\u2014romantic relationships and friendships in adulthood. \u201cIn general, if you had high-quality friendships and felt connected to your friends in childhood, then you felt more secure in romantic relationships and friendships at age 30,\u201d Dugan says. People who enjoyed increasingly close and deepening friendships across childhood and adolescence also showed significant gains in those departments as adults, she adds.<\/p>\n
The study\u2019s decades-spanning data are \u201cuniquely valuable\u201d and allowed the authors \u201cto show, using sophisticated analyses, how early social experiences affect later adult personality and close interpersonal relationships,\u201d says Phillip Shaver, a distinguished professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California, Davis.<\/p>\n
Omri Gillath, a social psychologist at the University of Kansas, describes the new study as \u201cexceptionally rigorous and methodologically sound.\u201d The authors \u201cprovide some of the strongest prospective evidence to date supporting a foundational assumption of attachment theory: that early relational experiences shape how adults relate to others\u201d\u2014not just in general but also within specific types of relationships, he says.<\/p>\n
The participants were still in early adulthood in the most recent analysis, Gillath adds, so future work could examine whether the same early-life factors continue to be so influential throughout life\u2014and how major life transitions, such as parenthood, bereavement or divorce, might reshape those dynamics. Single-parent families, multigenerational households and same-sex couples should also be studied in future research, Dugan says. Participants in the current study were nearly 80 percent white, so more racial and ethnic diversity is needed to get a truly representative sample, she adds.<\/p>\n
Dugan also emphasizes that the findings do not mean the past inexorably dictates the tone of a person\u2019s relationships in adulthood. \u201cYou\u2019re definitely not doomed,\u201d she says. Evidence supports that adult attachment styles can change in response to later life events and can even fluctuate month to month in response to both positive and negative relationship experiences. \u201cThese findings show attachment styles are malleable,\u201d Dugan says. \u201cYou can have a not-so-great relationship with your parents and still develop a secure and healthy bond with a close friend or romantic partner in adulthood.\u201d<\/p>\n
To that end, Dugan and her colleagues are building a research-based interactive app for promoting secure attachments in both romantic relationships and adult friendships. \u201cIt starts with easy first tasks, like hugging a partner or sending an encouraging text to a friend, and then works up from there,\u201d she says. \u201cThere\u2019s always an opportunity to change your attachment style, and I\u2019m excited about finding the most effective practical, concrete strategies for doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We come into the world screaming and vulnerable\u2014entirely dependent on adult caregivers to keep us safe and teach us how to connect with others. The nature of these earliest relationships influences how we behave towards others and see the world long after we\u2019ve grown\u2014but in more complex and nuanced ways than researchers previously thought, according<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31915,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[2568,1867,18502,6768,4403,2365,188,891],"class_list":{"0":"post-31914","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-adult","9":"tag-affect","10":"tag-attachment","11":"tag-childhood","12":"tag-large","13":"tag-relationships","14":"tag-study","15":"tag-style"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}