656 vI. SELF‑ AND S OCIAL P ROCESSES
secure in some relational contexts but inse -
cure in others. Attachment theory clearly as -
sumes that if an individual has a relatively 
secure relationship with his or her parents 
and friends, then he or she is biased toward 
developing a secure relationship with a new 
romantic partner. If that partner begins to 
be unresponsive or unsupportive, however, 
it seems unlikely that the individual will per -
sist fully in maintaining a secure represen -
tation of the partner. Gradually, or perhaps 
even abruptly, the representation should 
evolve to include doubts about the partner’s 
responsiveness and commitment to the rela -
tionship.
One of the important questions for theory 
and research concerns the fate of “other” 
attachment representations in the face of 
relationship-  specific changes. What hap -
pens, for example, to a person’s representa -
tions of his or her parents when a nonparen -
tal relationship (e.g., a romantic one) takes a 
turn for the worse? It is possible that changes 
in one relational domain do not carry over 
laterally to other domains. And, if they do, 
it is possible that such changes are merely 
fleeting.
The Role of Early Experience
Simpson and his colleagues (2007, 2015) 
proposed that early caregiving experiences 
influence attachment- relevant outcomes 
later in life via indirect pathways. Specifi -
cally, they proposed that early attachment 
experiences shape the child’s developing 
social competence, which in turn shapes 
the quality of the child’s relationships with 
peers. Those experiences then contribute 
to the way attachment processes unfold in 
adulthood.
There are a few important implications 
of this framework. First, when taken at face 
value, it implies that if one is trying to un -
derstand what factors contribute the most 
to adult attachment processes, the factors 
most proximate to the outcomes of interest 
should be the most consequential. Specifi -
cally, adult attachment outcomes should be 
better explained by interpersonal experi -
ences in adulthood or early adolescence than 
early childhood per se. Thus, although early 
experiences are believed to play a role in 
shaping the foundations  for what is to come next, their effects have the potential to be 
overshadowed by ongoing interpersonal ex -
periences as people develop.
Having said this, some studies suggest 
that early experiences continue to play a 
role in shaping some attachment-  relevant 
outcomes—  above and beyond more recent 
experiences. We highlight these studies not 
because we wish to argue that early experi -
ences can have powerful implications for un -
derstanding individual differences in adult 
attachment, but because they offer valuable 
nuance regarding how investigators might 
go about understanding the role of early 
experiences in shaping later outcomes— 
implications that could apply to personality 
research more generally. In one such study, 
Raby, Roisman, Fraley, and Simpson (2015) 
found that the quality of early caregiving 
experiences in children was weakly related 
to social competence at age 4. But, impor -
tantly, the magnitude of that association was 
relatively constant across time ( r = .17), with 
similar effects at ages 10, 23, and 32. This 
raises the intriguing possibility that, even if 
recent experiences play a more powerful role 
in shaping later outcomes than early experi -
ences, those early experiences might not be 
fully inert; they may continue to contribute 
to attachment dynamics later in life.
How might this happen? One possibility 
involves the canalization processes we de -
scribed earlier in this chapter: As develop -
ment unfolds, people’s developmental trajec -
tories become increasingly entrenched. It is 
possible that persistent environmental con -
ditions early in life may leave a more endur -
ing mark on the developing individual than 
similar such conditions taking place later, 
because the brain, for example, is more plas -
tic early in childhood and adolescence than 
it is later on (Casey, Tottenham, Liston, & 
Durston, 2005).
This is not to say that early experiences 
necessarily leave an immutable mark on the 
developing person, or that later experiences 
are not influential. To reconcile these ten -
sions, we have found it useful to conceptual -
ize development as a balancing act between 
forces that push for socialization (environ -
ments shaping people) and selection (people 
shaping their environments). Fraley and 
Brumbaugh (2004), for example, suggested 
that socialization dynamics tend to take pre -