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Attachment transfer among Swedish and German adolescents: A prospective longitudinal study
Author(s) -
FRIEDLMEIER WOLFGANG,
GRANQVIST PEHR
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
personal relationships
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.81
H-Index - 83
eISSN - 1475-6811
pISSN - 1350-4126
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-6811.2006.00117.x
Subject(s) - psychology , longitudinal study , german , developmental psychology , prospective cohort study , anxiety , romance , medicine , surgery , archaeology , pathology , psychiatry , psychoanalysis , history
This prospective longitudinal study investigated whether and in what way different functions of attachment relationships are transferred from parents to reciprocal relationship partners in adolescence. Furthermore, the impact of nationality, romantic relationship status, and individual differences in perceived attachment history and current attachment orientation on the timing and extent of transfer was examined. Adolescents from Sweden and Germany were studied over a 12‐ to 15‐month time span. As predicted, the transfer generally unfolded in a step‐by‐step process in cross‐sectional analyses. However, the predicted direction of transfer from parents to peers could not be confirmed in the prospective analyses. Adolescents who had formed a romantic relationship between assessments showed a stronger transfer from parents to peers compared to those who had not. German adolescents had transferred to a larger extent at Time Point 1, but Swedish adolescents caught up by Time Point 2. Finally, the combination of an insecure history with mother and high current anxiety was linked to a particularly high degree of prospective attachment transfer, whereas an insecure history with mother combined with high current avoidance predicted a particularly low degree of prospective transfer.