Learning About Your Attachment Style

Faculty and doctoral candidates at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are conducting research on attachment, particularly adult attachment. In my amateur research on attachment theory (meaning when I googled it), I came across two websites managed by some of the university's researchers that host or link to attachment-related and personality quizzes/questionnaires: http://www.yourPersonality.net/, maintained by Associate Professor R. Chris Fraley, and http://www.personalityassessor.com, maintained by doctoral candidate Nathan W. Hudson. Researchers are using these online questionnaires for the education of the quiz-taker as well as for collecting information to further their research. (See http://www.yourPersonality.net/about.htm and http://www.personalityassessor.com/about for more specifics.) If you are at all interested in attachment theory or personality assessments, I highly recommend these websites. Both provide informative quiz results that can help you understand more about yourself and how you relate to others in the context of attachment theory. Below are summaries of a few quiz results I received.

From http://www.yourPersonality.net/:

Relationship Structures

This quiz asks questions about four significant relationships in a person's life. Results are plotted on a coordinate grid, placing the quiz-taker in one of four broad attachment categories. All of my results land unquestionably in the “dismissing” area of the graph.

Close Relationships Questionnaire [ECR-R Attachment Style Questionnaire]

This quiz asks questions about your experience in “intimate” relationships, focusing on romantic relationships. The result is plotted on a grid, similar to the results in the Relationship Structures quiz, again placing the quiz-taker in one of the four attachment categories. Not surprisingly, based on my results I have a dismissing attachment style.

From www.personalityassessor.com:

Your Attachment Network

This quiz allows you to choose four significant people in your life and asks you to identify your relationship to them. Several statements are presented and you are prompted to respond in regard to the various relationships you selected. Your results for each relationship are broken down into three general categories: 1) Usage as Attachment Figure, 2) Attachment Anxiety, and 3) Attachment Avoidance. Your attachment style is provided for each relationship as well. To top it all off, your overall levels of Attachment Anxiety and Attachment Avoidance are plotted in comparison to the results of others who have taken the quiz. Once again, my results state that I exhibit a dismissing attachment style. My overall anxiety and avoidance ratings appear below.

I find these websites extremely helpful in learning about and better understanding my attachment pattern/style. This awareness has helped me process a bit more of the distressing aspects in past relationships as well as understanding my struggles in present relationships. Yes, I am insecure in relationships. Yes, I use avoidance tactics to cope with distress. No, it doesn't always have to be this way.