Adult Attachment: A Personality or Relationship Construct?

The topic of personality or individual differences has been the primary focus for researchers studying infants, children, and adults. The dominant concerns with internal working models and attachment styles has led to relative neglect of the way that current relationship patterns continue to influence personality. Hazan and Shaver provide thoughtful and self-critical review that starts to redress this imbalance. They have grown uncomfortable with the view that is a theory about three (or maybe four) types of babies and attempt to move away from this simplistic conception by suggesting that theory is first and foremost normative theory. This normative perspective allows them to sketch framework that describes how parent-infant attachments are gradually transformed into adult bonds and to organize existing research about adult relationships. Focusing on relationships rather than individual differences raises several new and important questions.