Attachment and Exploration in Adults: Chronic and Contextual Accessibility

It was predicted that attachment is associated with exploration in adults. An exploration scale that measures willingness to explore the physical, social, and intellectual environments was constructed. Study 1 measured chronic attachment patterns and found that both anxiety and avoidance correlated negatively with the desire to explore. Study 2 primed attachment styles by exposing participants to attachment-related sentences in an ostensible sentence memorization task. Participants primed with a secure style were more open to exploration than were participants primed with the insecure styles. Together, the results of Study 1 and Study 2 provide converging evidence that the behavior systems of attachment and exploration are linked in adults.