Consistency and Specificity of Attachments to Parents, Friends, and Romantic Partners in Emerging Adulthood

The idea of a general working model of attachment suggests a high consistency among the attachments to different attachment figures. However, many empirical results show that attachments to different attachment figures differ substantially. In this study, 512 emerging adults rated their attachment quality to one parent, the romantic partner, and several friends over three measurement occasions. We used a multilevel structural equation model to examine the degree of consistency and different aspects of specificity. Attachment to parents was strongly associated with the attachment to friends (around r = .4) and less strongly with the attachment to romantic partners (around r = .3). However, most of the variance was specific to the different attachment figures. Attachments to different friends were more strongly correlated with each other than with the attachments to figures of other domains. The results hint at the existence of specific attachment patterns for every domain of attachment figures.