Partner-related attachment styles and behavioral expectancies about romantic partners, friends, and colleagues

Attachment theory proposes that humans develop internal working models of self and others; The models contain, among other things, beliefs and expectations about the likely responses of other people, to which varying degrees and kinds of attachment have been formed. Little is known about the extent to which these expectations generalize over different kinds of personal relationships. The present study explored correlations between different partner-related attachment styles and expectations about likely patterns of interactions in three different kinds of personal relationships (romantic relationships, friendships, relationships among colleagues). The study is based on the data of 150 male and female students. Results show that attachment style-related expectations are largely relationship-specific and particularly pronounced with regard to romantic love partners. The correlations between partner-related attach ment styles smd expectations with regard to friends and colleagues are low and mostly nonsignificant.