strategies intensify the system’s efforts to influence other people to respond in accordance with the system’s goal
(similar to anxious attachment), and deactivation strategies involve down-regulation of a behavioral system to reduce
the frustration and anguish of repeated unsuccessful efforts to attain the system’s goal (similar to avoidant attach-
ment). In the following sections we review measures of some of the key behavioral systems other than attachment.
The goal of the caregiving behavioral system is to reduce other people’s suffering, protect them from harm,
and foster their growth and development ( Collins, Ford, Guichard, Kane, and Feeney, 2010 ). According to
Bowlby (1982), this system emerged over the course of evolution because it increased the inclusive fitness of
humans by making it more likely that children, siblings, and tribe members with whom a person shared genes
would survive to reproductive age and succeed in producing and rearing offspring. In humans, the system is
capable of extension to mates, friends, and even strangers.
According to Collins et al. (2010) , a caring concern for another person’s needs includes sensitivity and respon-
siveness, the two aspects of parental caregiving emphasized by Bowlby (1982) and Ainsworth et al. (1978) .
Sensitivity includes attunement to, and accurate interpretation of, another person’s signals of distress, worry, or
need, and responding effectively to them ( George & Solomon, 2008 ).Responsiveness includes generous intentions,
validation of the troubled person’s needs and feelings; respecting his or her beliefs, attitudes and values; and
helping the person feel loved, understood, and cared for ( Reis & Shaver, 1988 ).
Although it is assumed by attachment researchers that everyone is born with the potential to become an
effective caregiver, early social experiences are thought to affect one’s sensitivity and responsiveness to others.
Shaver et al. (2010) developed the Caregiving System Scale, described below, to measure individual differences
in caregiving within couple relationships.
Caregiving System Scale (CSS)
(Shaver et al., 2010 ).
Variable
Kunce and Shaver (1994) expected the effectiveness of caregiving in adult couple relationships to depend on
sensitivity and responsiveness. They hypothesized that adult attachment orientations (anxiety and avoidance)
would be systematically related to caregiving patterns, and that the kind of support provided to others would be
affected by the caregiver’s own attachment needs. For example, anxiously wishing to get closer to one’s partner
could cause a person to be intrusive or compulsive about caregiving. Hyperactivated caregiving is intrusive,
poorly timed, and effortful, and is aimed at making oneself indispensable to a partner or applauding oneself for
being competent or admirable as a caregiver. These goals can be achieved by exaggerating appraisals of others’
needs, adopting a hypervigilant stance toward other people’s imagined needs or troubles, forcing others to accept
one’s caregiving efforts, and focusing on others’ needs to neglect of one’s own. Deactivation of the caregiving sys-
tem involves insufficient empathy, withdrawal from caregiving, offering only half-hearted assistance, and insist-
ing on maintaining emotional distance when another person seeks care ( Shaver et al., 2010 ).
Description
The Caregiving System Scale (CSS) was designed to assess individual differences in hyperactivation and deac-
tivation of the caregiving system; it includes 20 items evenly distributed on these two dimensions. The instruc-
tions ask respondents to think about situations in which other people need help, without focusing on a specific
person, and to rate the extent to which each item is or is not self-descriptive on a 7-point Likert-type scale.
Sample
The CSS was used in a study of 108 female and 70 male Israeli undergraduates who completed the measure in
Hebrew, and 263 female and 73 male American undergraduates who completed it in English.
Reliability
Internal Consistency
Cronbach alpha coefficients were found to be .81 and .82 for the hyperactivation dimension and .87 and .88 for
the deactivation dimension, for Israeli and American samples, respectively ( Shaver et al., 2010 ).439 BEHAVIORAL SYSTEMS SCALES
IV. INTERPERSONAL STYLES