Attachment Dimensions and the Big Five Personality Traits: A Bi-Directional

Relationship

Authors : Ridhya, Pankti Gohel

27/03/2014

INDEXParticulars Page No

Abstract 3Introduction 4-6Review of Literature 6-8Method 8Questionnaire 9-10Sample 10Hypotheses 10Data Collection and Analysis 11Result and Discussion 11-15Conclusion 15References 16-17Result Tables 18-21

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Abstract

Early attachment-styles are found to have influences on emotionally intimate adult relationships

and the way an individual views oneself, others and the world. Research on adult attachment is

guided by the assumption that the emotional bond between the caregiver and the child is

responsible for the emotionally intimate relationships between adults later in life. The different

personality traits are responsible for the kind of relationships people maintain. College life is a

period of major transitions, especially in terms of bonding in an intimate, emotional relationship.

The current study is directed to find out the relationship between Attachment styles and the Big

Five personality traits of 100 Indian college students comprising of 50 males and 50 females, as

well as to learn whether there exists gender differences in both the attachment dimension and the

personality domains. It was ensured that all the participants had been involved in a romantic

relationship at least once. A quantitative approach was employed where in, the Big Five

Personality Inventory and the Experiences in Close Relationships Scale were administered to

assess the personality traits and attachment dimensions respectively. Descriptive and Inferential

statistical procedures were used to analyze the correlations between each attachment style and

each personality trait. T-test for independent means was performed to calculate gender

differences and analysis of Regression was carried out on obtained significant values. The results

revealed a strong bi-directional relationship between certain attachment styles and personality

domains. The results suggest the importance of a healthy child-caregiver relationship in order for

a healthy personality development and subsequent adult romantic relationships.

Keywords: Attachment Styles, Big Five Personality Traits, Bi-directional relationship, College

students, adult romantic relationships

Introduction:

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Personality is referred to the distinctive and relatively enduring ways of thinking, feeling and

acting that characterizes a person’s responses to life situations. Personality traits are relatively

stable, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral characteristics of people that help establish their

individual identities and distinguish them from others. The Big Five also known as the Five

Factor Theory is one of the many trait theories employed to define an individual’s personality.

The Big Five factors were discovered through a statistical procedure called factor analysis, which

was used to analyze how ratings of various personality traits are correlated in humans. The term

"Big Five" was coined by Lew Goldberg and was originally associated with studies of

personality traits. Five-Factor Theory, formulated by Robert (Jeff) McCrae and Paul Costa, is

an explanatory account of the role of the Big Five factors in personality. Five-Factor Theory

includes a number of propositions about the nature, origins, and developmental course of

personality traits. The five factors are as follows: Extraversion, as opposed to introversion,

implies an energetic approach to the social and material world and includes traits such as

sociability, activity, assertiveness, and positive emotionality; Agreeableness, contrasts a pro-

social and communal orientation toward others with antagonism and includes traits such as

altruism, tender-mindedness, trust, and modesty; Conscientiousness, contrasted with lack of

direction, describes socially prescribed impulse control that facilitates task and goal-directed

behaviour, such as thinking before acting, delaying gratification, following norms and rules, and

planning, organizing, and prioritizing tasks; Neuroticism, contrasts emotional stability and even-

temperedness with negative emotionality, such as feeling anxious, nervous, sad, and tense;

Openness to experience (versus closed-mindedness), describes the breadth, depth, originality,

and complexity of an individual’s mental and experiential life.

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Attachment theory’s importance in the psychological literature has expanded vastly over the last

25 years. It provides a framework for understanding how people relate to others and what drives

their experiences in close relationships. Attachment theory has its roots in the study of infants

and their bond to their mothers or their significant caregiver (Shaver & Mikulincer, 2012). John

Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth founded the theory in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The theory of

infant attachment states that infants are genetically predetermined and biologically inclined to

create a bond with their caregiver in order to get their needs met. The attachment bond created

between the primary caregiver and the infant then shapes the way the infant views the world,

themselves and others. Mary Ainsworth, through studies using the ‘strange situation’, found that

infants fell into four categories of attachment orientations based on their behaviors: secure,

avoidant, anxious, and disorganized (Shaver & Mikulincer, 2012). Research on adult attachment

is guided by the assumption that the same motivational system that gives rise to the close

emotional bond between caregivers and the children is responsible for the bond that develops

between adults in emotionally intimate relationships. Bowlby was primarily focused on

understanding the nature of the infant-caregiver relationship, he believed that attachment

characterized human experience from "the cradle to the grave." It was not until the mid-1980,

however, that researchers began to take seriously the possibility that attachment processes may

play out in adulthood. Hazan and Shaver (1987) were two of the first researchers to explore

Bowlby's ideas in the context of romantic relationships. According to Hazan and Shaver, the

emotional bond that develops between adult romantic partners is partly a function of the same

motivational system--the attachment behavioral system--that gives rise to the emotional bond

between infants and their caregivers.

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In the personality expanse, John, Donahue, and Kentle (1991), coming from the lexical tradition

of personality research (rather than the questionnaire approach of Costa and McCrae), introduced

their Big Five Inventory (BFI), which has become one of the most commonly used measures of

the Big Five traits.

In 1998, Brennan, Clark, and Shaver reported a large factor-analytic study involving virtually all

of the self-report attachment style measures proposed up to that time. They found that a two-

dimensional, continuous measure of attachment style (the Experiences in Close Relationships

scale, or ECR), could represent all of the existing measures while adding considerably to

measurement precision. Brennan, Clark, and Shaver (1998) called the two dimensions

“attachment related anxiety” and “attachment related avoidance”. Individuals high on either

anxiety or avoidance both experience insecurity and distress within close relationships, but their

reactions to this uncertainty differ considerably. Someone high on avoidance would be described

as experiencing apprehension toward becoming close with others, often resulting in emotional

reserve and an increased need for feelings of independence. Someone high on anxiety would be

described as being overwhelmingly engrossed with the need for closeness and intimacy and

ruminating about their own worth to their significant partner.

Shaver and Brennan (1992) were the first to report correlations between attachment-style ratings

and the Big Five traits. Their findings, which included several significant correlations between

the attachment and Big Five measures, indicated some degree of overlap or associations between

the two sets of constructs. As expected, attachment anxiety was positively associated with Big

Five neuroticism, but not to a degree indicating complete redundancy or substitutability (r=.33).

Attachment anxiety, avoidance and security were also modestly to moderately correlate with

some of the Big Five trait scales.

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Personality and adult attachment have been found to be rather stable over time, though it is

thought that attachment is more malleable than personality (John et al., 2000; Fraley et al., 2011).

Although there is some overlap, attachment and the Big Five personality traits are statistically

separate constructs (Noftle& Shaver, 2006). Noftle and Shaver completed a study in 2006

looking at the relationship between the dimensions of attachment and the Big Five personality

traits, first completing a meta-analysis and also completing a study of their own. This study

found only one dimension of personality to have a strong relationship, anxious attachment was

strongly associated with the personality trait of neuroticism (r = .56); followed by the dimension

of avoidant attachment being weakly negatively correlated with agreeableness (r = -.22) and

Extraversion (r = -.26). Although some relationships were found between the dimensions of

attachment and of personality, for the most part the relationships were small (Noftle & Shaver,

2006).

Several other similar studies show that attachment anxiety is moderately to strongly correlated

with neuroticism, modestly correlated with extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness

but not correlated with openness. Attachment avoidance has been modestly to moderately

correlate (negatively) with extraversion and agreeableness, but not correlated with openness.

Some studies, but not others, have found avoidance to be positively correlated with neuroticism

and negatively with conscientiousness.

The aim of the present study is to study the relationship between the attachment dimensions and

the big five personality traits of young adults.

Objectives:

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1. To understand the relation among the Attachment dimensions and the Big Five

personality factors.

2. To explore the gender differences between males and females on the Attachment

dimensions and the Big Five personality factors.

Hypotheses:

Our first set of hypotheses focus on findings we expect to replicate based on past research.

1. Attachment and Personality:

a. This study hypothesizes that both attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance

will be positively correlated with the Big Five factor of neuroticism. In particular,

anxiety is expected to have a stronger positive correlation with neuroticism.

b. This study hypothesizes that attachment avoidance will be negatively correlated

with extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.

2. Gender Differences:

a. There will be significant gender differences between males and females on the

Attachment dimensions.

b. There will be significant gender differences between males and females on the

Big Five personality factors.

Methodology

Sample

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The sample comprised of college students chosen from various educational institutes in Delhi,

India. The sample size was 100, out of which 50 were females and 50 were males. All the

respondents were within the age group of 18 to 21years and had been a part of romantic

relationship at least once. Purposive sampling was employed.

Materials

The following psychological measures were used to study the objectives of the present study:

1. Experiences in Close Relationships (Brennan, Clark, and Shaver, 1998): It is a 36-item

self-report measure used to evaluate the construct of adult attachment.

2. The Big Five Inventory (John and Srivastava, 1999): It is a multidimensional personality

inventory. This self-report measure comprises of 44 items and evaluates an individual on

all of the big five factors.

Procedure

After the selection of sample, the participants were individually informed about the objectives of

the study. Following this, an informed consent was obtained from all the participants.

Participants were assured that the responses will be kept highly confidential and will be used for

research purposes only. Both the questionnaires were administered consecutively. Care was

taken to ensure that instructions specific to each scale were read and adhered to by the

participants. In cases where the participants found difficulties in understanding the items in the

questionnaires, they were accordingly assisted. After the completion of the scales, it was made

certain that the questionnaire had been filled thoroughly.

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Results

Table 1: Zero-order correlations among the Big Five and Attachment dimensions

Big five (BFI) Attachment

 Avoidance

Anxiety

Openness -0.044 -0.057Conscientiousness -.306** -0.039

Extraversion -0.161-.283*

*Agreeableness -0.071 0.061Neuroticism -0.119 .371**

Note. N=100 ** p < .01 * p < .05

In order to tests hypothesis one, attachment dimensions were correlated with the big five

personality scales. Unexpected results were obtained wherein only Attachment Anxiety was

strongly correlated with Neuroticism (r=.37). Anxiety was also negatively correlated with

Extraversion (r=-.28). Also Avoidance was found to be negatively correlated only with

Conscientiousness (r=-.31).

Table 2: Linear Regression of the Attachment dimensions on the Big Five

  Attachment Anxiety Attachment Avoidance  β R2 ΔR2 β R2 ΔR2

Big Five (BFI)   0.186 0.143   0.153 0.107Openness .002     .02    Conscientiousness -.06     -.3**  Extraversion -.2     -.22*  Agreeableness .08     -.07    Neuroticism .33**   -.18    

Note. N=100; β = standardized β coefficients; R2 = R square; ΔR2 = change in R square. Attachment dimensions were measured using the ECR; the Big Five were measured using the BFI.

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** p < .01 * p < .05

Regression analysis predicting attachment dimensions from the Big Five traits:

We also conducted regression analyses in which each of the attachment dimensions was

predicted from the BFI scales. Regressing Attachment Anxiety on the Big Five, we found that

Neuroticism was the strongest Big Five predictor (β=.33; p < .01). Regressing Avoidance on the

Big Five, we found that Conscientiousness was the strongest Big Five predictor (β=-.3; p < .01),

followed by Extraversion (β=-.22; p < .05). The Big Five accounted for an additional 14% of the

variance in Attachment Anxiety and for an additional 10% of the variance in Avoidance,

demonstrating that the two sets of constructs are related but are not simply redundant.

Table 3: Mean differences between males and females on attachment dimensions and the Big Five traits

 

t-test for Equality of Means

  tOpenness -1.256Conscientiousness -0.516Extraversion -1.973Agreeableness -2.428*Neuroticism -2.047*Avoidance 1.626Anxiety -0.617

Note. N=100 ** p < .01 * p < .05

Independent- samples T test to assess the gender differences on the Big Five and Attachment

Dimensions was carried out. There exists a significant difference between Indian male and

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female college students only on the Big five traits of Agreeableness (t= -2.428, p=.017) and

Neuroticism (t=-2.047, p=.043). There exists no significant gender differences on any attachment

dimensions. Hence, hypothesis two was only partially supported.

Discussion

The present study follows a quantitative approach. Comparisons between male and female

students were made on their adjustment styles using the t-test for independent means. Further,

Pearson’s zero-order correlation was found between adjustment styles and each dimension of the

Big Five. Linear Regression was employed to test the predictive power of the Big Five on

Adjustment styles.

In comparing our findings with those obtained in previous studies of attachment style and the

Big Five, we observe mostly similarities. Attachment anxiety correlated positively with

Neuroticism. These findings replicate Shaver and Brennan’s (1992) as well as Noftle and

Shaver’s (2005) original findings to some extent and make sense conceptually. Attachment

Anxiety relates to insecurity, depression, vulnerability, and anxiety facets of Neuroticism, which

fits with previous findings suggesting that anxious attachment occurs when a person feels

inadequately loved and insufficiently in control of interpersonal events. The literature on infant-

parent attachment suggests that anxious attachment occurs when a parental caregiver is

unreliable or unpredictable, which causes the infant to feel vulnerable and remain vigilant

(Thompson, 1999). Attachment Anxiety was found to be negatively correlated with Extraversion.

Individuals scoring low on Extraversion prefer their alone time and do not get as much charge

from social interactions; they tend to seem quiet, low-key, deliberate, and less involved in the

social world; this is synonymous with those high on anxiety who would be described as being

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overwhelmingly engrossed with the need for closeness and intimacy with a significant other and

ruminating about their own worth to their significant partner.

Attachment Avoidance, however, was significantly associated negatively only with

Conscientiousness (planning and organization). An individual scoring low on conscientiousness

may approach the world in a more free-flowing sort of way in which goals may be less clear and

therefore more difficult to attain. Someone high on avoidance would be described as

experiencing apprehension toward becoming close with others, often resulting in emotional

reserve and an increased need for feelings of independence.

Limitations

Our study encounters a number of limitations. We only used self-report measures for all of the

variables. Albeit, we ensured that the participants have been involved at least once in a romantic

relationship, we did not assess the relationship length which might have interacted with the

predictive power of the attachment variables. We did not assess the power of attachment-style

dimensions and the Big Five traits as predictors of relationship quality unlike Shaver and

Brennan (1992) and Noftle and Shaver (2005).

Conclusion

The results of the present study state a bi-directional relationship between the attachment

dimensions and certain specific Big Five personality domains. There is a significant negative

correlation between Attachment-Avoidance and the Conscientiousness domain of the Big Five.

This suggests that adults who tend to have difficulty with intimacy and close relationships

experience lack of direction and thoroughness. Attachment-Anxiety is strongly positively

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correlated with Neuroticism as found in previous studies as well. Individuals with Anxious

attachment style behave in a way that exacerbates their own fears and show traits of

impulsiveness and vulnerability. Attachment-Anxiety is also found to be strongly negatively

correlated with Extraversion. This is implies that they lack positive emotions and often become

clingy towards their partner. No gender differences were found in the Attachment styles.

Similarly, no gender differences were found in the domains of Openness and Conscientiousness;

however, significant differences were observed in the other three dimensions of Extraversion,

Agreeableness and Neuroticism.

Acknowledgment

We thank Dr. Preeti Kapur for guiding us in the selection and conduction of the present study.

We also thank Dr. Pooja V. Anand for help in reviewing and preparing this manuscript.

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