648 vI. SELF‑ AND S OCIAL P ROCESSES
long interviews, Main and her colleagues 
(1985) developed a means of predicting 
which parents would have secure children 
and which would have insecure children, as 
assessed in the Strange Situation.
Developmental research revealed that par -
ents who are able to recall and describe their 
early experiences in a coherent fashion are 
more likely to have infants classified as “se -
cure” in the Strange Situation. Such parents, 
called “secure and autonomous with respect 
to attachment,” or just “secure,” are able to 
collaborate effectively with the interviewer 
and provide accounts that are internally 
consistent. In contrast, other parents pro -
vide less coherent narratives and inconsis -
tent information (e.g., describing their early 
relationships with parents as being “warm,” 
yet narrating specific eavpisodes in which 
they felt neglected or unappreciated by their 
parents). Some adults tend to minimize the 
relevance of their parents, whereas others 
appear to be overly enmeshed in relation -
ships with parents. The theme of develop -
mental research on adult attachment is that 
experiences taking place in childhood have 
downstream implications for understanding 
a broad array of psychological outcomes, 
including social competence (e.g., Groh 
et al., 2014), peer relations (e.g., Pallini, 
Baiocco, Schneider, Madigan, & Atkinson, 
2014), and psychopathology (e.g., DeKlyen 
& Greenberg, 2016). (See Hesse, 2016, and 
Crowell, Fraley, & Roisman, 2016, for in-
depth reviews of developmental research 
using the AAI.)
Among social and personality psycholo -
gists, attachment theory was adopted as both 
a normative and an individual-  differences 
approach to understanding the nature of 
close relationships, often of the romantic– 
sexual variety. Hazan and Shaver (1987) 
were among the first researchers to explore 
Bowlby’s ideas in this context. They argued 
that the emotional bond that develops be -
tween adult romantic partners is partly a 
function of the same motivational system— 
the attachment behavioral system—  that 
gives rise to the emotional bond between 
infants and their caregivers. Moreover, they 
observed that infant–  parent and adult pair-
bonds were similar in the following ways: (1) 
Both infants and adults feel safer when their attachment figure is nearby and responsive; 
(2) both engage in close, intimate, bodily 
contact; (3) both feel insecure when their 
attachment figure is separated from them 
and inaccessible; (4) both share discoveries 
with each other; (5) both engage in mutual 
eye contact, touch each other’s faces gently 
or playfully, snuggle and embrace, and seem 
fascinated and preoccupied with each other; 
and (6) both tend to use a special kind of 
communication, called “motherese” in the 
infant–  parent relationship and “baby talk” 
in romantic relationships (Shaver, Hazan, 
& Bradshaw, 1988). On the basis of these 
parallels, it was argued that many adult ro -
mantic relationships, like infant–  caregiver 
relationships, are attachments,  and that ro -
mantic love is a property of the attachment 
behavioral system, as well as the somewhat 
distinct motivational systems that give rise 
to caregiving and sexuality (Hazan & Shav -
er, 1987; Shaver et al., 1988). In short, one 
of the key themes of research in the social– 
personality tradition is that as people reach 
adolescence and adulthood, they begin to 
form attachment relationships with people 
other than their parents (e.g., peers, roman -
tic partners). These relationships function in 
ways similar to infant–  parent attachments 
and, as such, can be understood using the 
same concepts and theoretical principles.
The Structure of  Individual Differences 
in Adult  Attachment
Although modern research on adult attach -
ment is rooted in the notion that the attach -
ment behavioral system is just as relevant 
for understanding behavior, thought, and 
affect in adults as it is in children, the ma -
jority of research on adult attachment has 
emphasized individual differences in the 
way the attachment system is organized. 
The earliest research on adult attachment 
examined associations between individual 
differences in adult attachment and the way 
people think about their romantic relation -
ships. Hazan and Shaver (1987) developed a 
simple questionnaire to measure these indi -
vidual differences by asking participants to 
indicate which of the following paragraphs 
best characterize how they think, feel, and 
behave in close relationships: