Adult Attachment Style Analysis

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What is the role of attachment style in coping with job loss and the empty nest in adulthood?
Hypothesis 1- Securely attached individuals will have better adjustment and more adaptive coping regarding forced unemployment and the post-parental transition than will insecurely attached individuals.
Hypothesis 2- Attachment styles are predicted to interact with the experience of differential life events in that participants who are anxiously and avoidantly attached will function more poorly if they are experiencing job loss, a non-normative life event, than if they are launching children, a normative life event.
Hypothesis 3- For life events that are normative (i.e., the empty nest), the extent of loss associated with the last child’s leaving home …show more content…
Attachment style was assessed via the Adult Attachment Scale (AAS; Collins & Read, 1990); constructs were: 1) the extent to which the individual is comfortable with interpersonal closeness (closeness); 2) the extent to which the individual feels he or she can trust and depend on others (dependence); and 3) the extent to which the individual feels anxious about being abandoned or unloved (anxiety). Secure, anxious, and avoidant attachment styles were operationalized via present overall sample median splits defining the appropriate combinations of the closeness, dependence, and anxious …show more content…
Though, they did find that life events differ in terms of the greater perceived impact of job loss as well as greater proactive efforts at coping, relative to the empty nest. It was also found that attachment style affected proactive coping, in which securely adjusted people found it less necessary to engage in active efforts to cope with either life event; these people communicated less distress in job loss and the empty nest. It was found that there were not any interactions between attachment styles and responses to differential life events; not supporting their hypothesis. Events that were non-normative (job loss) however, evoked differential coping and adaptation responses. Men who were less comfortable with closeness, regardless of life events, showed less coping efforts; men who were more comfortable with closeness, actively coped with job loss more, but men who experienced the empty nest had lower coping scores than women. Men who were higher on closeness exhibited more proactive coping and experienced more marital distress when they experienced unemployment, and women who had experienced the empty nest showed similar results. People who experienced job loss reported using proactive coping more often and reported less personal and financial well-being relative to those experiencing the empty nest, while secure individuals reported
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