Chapter 11 Further Reading: Attachment Theory and Adult Romance

Foundational Primary Sources

Hazan, C., & Shaver, P. (1987). Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(3), 511–524. The paper that started the adult attachment research program. Despite its methodological limitations (single-item forced choice, non-representative sample), its theoretical contribution was genuinely revolutionary. Read the theory section carefully; compare the three-description measure to the ECR-R and consider what is gained and lost in the simplification.

Brennan, K. A., Clark, C. L., & Shaver, P. R. (1998). Self-report measurement of adult attachment: An integrative overview. In J. A. Simpson & W. S. Rholes (Eds.), Attachment theory and close relationships (pp. 46–76). Guilford Press. The foundational paper behind the original ECR, predecessor to the ECR-R. Describes the factor-analytic work that identified anxiety and avoidance as the two core dimensions underlying self-report attachment measurement.

Fraley, R. C., Waller, N. G., & Brennan, K. A. (2000). An item response theory analysis of self-report measures of adult attachment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(2), 350–365. The paper that developed the ECR-R from the original ECR using item response theory. More technical than the Hazan-Shaver paper but rewards careful reading for its discussion of what continuous dimensional measurement offers over categorical approaches.

Kim Bartholomew's Contributions

Bartholomew, K., & Horowitz, L. M. (1991). Attachment styles among young adults: A test of a four-category model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61(2), 226–244. The paper introducing the four-category model with the two-by-two self/other working model structure. This is the theoretical framework most contemporary research uses, and reading the original paper clarifies the conceptual logic in ways that secondary summaries often lose.

Accessible Books for Broader Context

Johnson, S. M. (2008). Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love. Little, Brown. Sue Johnson is the developer of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), the most rigorously evidence-based attachment-informed couples therapy approach. Hold Me Tight translates EFT principles and attachment theory for a general audience. Exceptionally well written. Essential for anyone interested in how attachment theory is applied therapeutically.

Levine, A., & Heller, R. S. F. (2010). Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find — and Keep — Love. TarcherPerigee. The popular book that brought adult attachment theory to a mass audience. Accessible, warm, and practically oriented. Read critically: the book's advocacy for early attachment disclosure is a normative recommendation, not a research finding, and the book occasionally treats attachment style more deterministically than the research warrants. Its strengths are accessibility and genuine usefulness for personal reflection.

Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2016). Attachment in Adulthood: Structure, Dynamics, and Change (2nd ed.). Guilford Press. The comprehensive academic treatment of adult attachment research. Mikulincer and Shaver are two of the most productive researchers in the field, and this volume synthesizes decades of experimental and survey research. Dense but invaluable for deeper engagement.

On Earned Security and Change

Roisman, G. I., Padrón, E., Sroufe, L. A., & Egeland, B. (2002). Earned-secure attachment status in retrospect and prospect. Child Development, 73(4), 1204–1219. A longitudinal examination of earned-secure adults drawing on the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation, one of the richest datasets in developmental psychology. Examines what pathways distinguish earned-secure from continuously-secure adults and what outcomes differ or converge.

On Digital Courtship and Attachment

Sumter, S. R., & Vandenbosch, L. (2019). Dating gone mobile: Demographic and personality-based correlates of using smartphone-based dating applications among emerging adults. New Media & Society, 21(3), 655–673. One of the earliest studies to systematically examine attachment style as a predictor of dating app behavior. Methodologically careful about the limitations of convenience sampling. A good model for how to use theoretically grounded hypotheses in a new digital behavior domain.

For the broader developmental context from which adult attachment research emerged, see Bowlby's three-volume Attachment and Loss series (1969, 1973, 1980) and Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, and Wall's Patterns of Attachment (1978). These are demanding but foundational texts for any serious engagement with the field.