Adult Attachment Nad Stategic Relational Communication Essay — страница 3

after a twelve-month period. The authors of the article said. “We realize that even a twelve month criterion is susceptible to memory distortion, but it is vastly superior to having no restrictions on time and seems to strike a reasonable compromise between the demands of sample size and memory” (Bachman & Zakahi, 2000, p. 14). This was a good assortment of people to use for this study. The age group was early twenties, which means the participants weren’t too old to remember being a toddler. Not only that but using people who had just started relationships within the last twelve months was intelligent because the study is about using attachment styles from when a person is young to initiate a relationship. For that reason, a researcher wouldn’t use someone who

hasn’t initiated a relationship somewhat recently. PROCEDURE The researchers used Hatfield and Rapson’s measurement of love schemas with the participants. This measure presents participants with short descriptions of each of the six love schemas. Each contributor was asked to indicate how well each of the schemas described him or her on a five-point scale ranging from “Never true of me” to “Always true of me”. Participants received a score for each love schema, which allowed the researchers to use correlational statistics to test the hypotheses. The relational initiation strategies of affinity seeking were measured using Bell and Daly’s scale. This scale is a 25 item self report measure, which uses a 7-point scale. It uses the phrases “I never did this” and “I

frequently did this”. Participants were instructed to recall the time they first met their partner and think about the approaches the used to initiate a relationship with that person. RESULTS The hypothesis stated that the first two love schemas, secure and clingy, would be positively related to affinity-seeking strategies. It was supported. The hypothesis stated that the last three, skittish, casual, and uninterested, would be negatively related to affinity seeking. It was also supported. The last hypothesis about fickle love schemas was not supported. The correlation between the fickle love schema and the affinity-seeking measure was not significant. DISCUSSION The authors main objectives for this study was to observe how the choices one makes when initiating a relationships

correlate with the attachment styles learned at a younger age and also how the communication choices people make relate to love schemas. Other studies have been done on this topic and have come to the same conclusions. Levy and Davis assessed the links between attachment styles and love schemas. The only difference with their study was the use of different, but related schemas. They both focus primarily on conceptualizing love and attachment, on linking theories of attachment styles, and on establishing the prominent issues in attachment theory, (Cassidy and Shaver, 1999). The results of the study sustained the ideas that love schemas are related to how people initiate relationships. Bachman & Zakahi have recommended that future researchers put a greater limitation on the

time that participants will have to recall the strategies they used. While the twelve-month period that they used was a good choice, maybe a six-month time frame would have been even better. No study can be 100% accurate, even if the best researcher is on the job. There are always exceptions to every rule, and in this study one could say that not everyone who uses affinity-seeking strategies would score high or low in accordance with the hypotheses provided here. Attachment theory is not a general theory of relationships, just as relationships don’t have general rulebook or to follow. There have been attempts to explain the relationships with which attachment theory deals, and of those attempts, Bachman & Zakahi did an excellent job in simplifying a study that otherwise

might have been bewildering for the simple fact that attachment theory is a phenomena that may never be fully explained. Bibliography EFERENCES Bachman, Guy., & Zakahi, Walter. (2000). Adult Attachment and strategic Relational Communication: Love Schemas and Affinity Seeking. Communication Reports, 13, 11-19. Bowlby, John. (1980). Loss. Basic Books. Bowlby, John. (1982). Attachment. Basic Books. Cassidy, Jude., & Shaver, Phillip. (1999). Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications. New York: The Guilford Press. Sperling, Michael., & Berman, William. (1994). Attachment in Adults: Clinical and Developmental Perspectives. New York: The Guilford Press. West, Malcolm., & Sheldon-Keller, Adrienne. (1994). Patterns of Relating: An Adult Attachment