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Adolescent attachment styles and their relation to the temperament and character traits of personality in a general population

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2020

Jayanti Chotai ,
Mattias Jonasson ,
Bruno Hägglöf  and
Rolf Adolfsson
Jayanti Chotai*
Affiliation:
Division of Psychiatry, Department of Clinical Sciences, University Hospital, University of Umeå, 901 85 Umeå, Sweden
Mattias Jonasson
Affiliation:
Division of Psychiatry, Department of Clinical Sciences, University Hospital, University of Umeå, 901 85 Umeå, Sweden
Bruno Hägglöf
Affiliation:
Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Department of Clinical Sciences, University of Umeå, Umeå, Sweden
Rolf Adolfsson
Affiliation:
Division of Psychiatry, Department of Clinical Sciences, University Hospital, University of Umeå, 901 85 Umeå, Sweden
*
*Corresponding author. Tel.: +46 90 78 50000; fax: +46 90 13 5324. E-mail address: jayanti.chotai@vll.se (J. Chotai).
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Abstract

Attachment styles as well as personality traits in adolescents and adults have been found to be associated with their health outcomes and with their personality pathology. In this cross-sectional exploratory study, we study the relationship between attachment styles that derive from our data employing the items of Feeney et al. (1994) self-report attachment style questionnaire (ASQ), and personality traits given by the junior version of Cloninger et al. (1993) self-report temperament and character inventory (TCI), in a sample of 426 adolescents (54% females) from a general population. The secure attachment style was correlated significantly negatively with the personality trait harm avoidance (HA), but significantly positively with the personality traits novelty seeking (NS), reward dependence (RD), cooperativeness (CO) and self-transcendence (ST). The preoccupied (anxious/ambivalent) attachment style was correlated significantly positively with HA and NS, but significantly negatively with self-directedness (SD). The fearful-avoidant category was correlated significantly negatively with NS. Our five-factor solution of the attachment styles and their relation to the TCI point towards a need for a modification of the two-axis, four-category attachment model of Bartholomew (1990) and Bartholomew and Horowitz (1991), with their category dismissing-avoidant replaced by the two categories defined here as dismissing relations (correlated significantly negatively with CO) and dismissing others (correlated significantly negatively with RD and significantly positively with SD).

Keywords

AttachmentPersonalityTemperamentCharacter
Type
Original article
Information
European Psychiatry , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , May 2005 , pp. 251 - 259
Copyright
Copyright © Elsevier SAS 2005

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