Interpersonal Traits and Attitudes Study

This study builds upon the researcher's previous work on attachment orientations as interpersonal attitudes, adding items to the Interpersonal Attitudes/Attachment Orientations (IA/AOS) Survey. Also, this study brings together separate lines of research from two separate teams (Wiggins et al. plus Markey & Markey), in an attempt to measure gender-related traits as interpersonal traits within a compact yet psychometrically valid manner.

About the project

The goal of this research is to measure attachment orientations and gender-related traits in a comprehensive manner. Previous researchers have found that attachment avoidance (but not attachment anxiety) is a significant negative predictor of "pro-relationship" behaviours; and positive femininity (but not positive masculinity) is a significant positive predictor of those behaviours. However, it is not clear whether underlying theories (e.g., attachment theory, gender schema theory) have gotten it wrong regarding attachment anxiety and positive masculinity, or whether previous methodologies (e.g., surveys for which each item measures only one factor) are inadequate. Given the importance of stable, functional relationships in general to individuals' social and psychological wellbeing -- and given the importance of stable, functional marital and family relationships to entire societies' wellbeing -- this research is designed to contribute to broader societal goals.

Within the field of relationship science, this is the only programmatic line of research to have shown that placing the gender-related traits of positive masculinity and positive femininity within a more comprehensive conceptual and empirical model of interpersonal traits (with positive masculinity as the positive pole of dominance, and positive femininity as the positive pole of nurturance, along with several other traits along a circular two-dimensional grid) enables both gender-related traits to emerge as predictors of accommodation in close relationships (nurturance as a significant positive predictor, dominance as a significant negative predictor). The present researcher seeks to find whether similar results hold (or not) for attachment orientations (in this instance, attachment anxiety as the negative pole of positive attitude toward self, and attachment avoidance as the negative pole of positive attitude toward significant others).

The aim of this project will be to examine the extent to which (1) "gender-related traits" (i.e., positive/ socially desirable aspects of masculinity and femininity) can be operationalised as the positive poles of interpersonal traits (i.e., dominance and nurturance); whereas (2) "attachment orientations" (i.e., attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance) can be operationalised as the negative poles of interpersonal attitudes (i.e., attitudes toward self in relation to significant others, and toward significant others in relation to the self).The methodology will be quantitative in nature; the researcher has developed brief sets of items for which eight subscale scores can be calculated and correlated (with the circularity of scores along a circle or circumplex for interpersonal traits, plus a circle/circumplex for interpersonal attitudes). Confirmatory factor analyses using LISREL 12 (Scientific Software International, 2025) will be conducted in order to evaluate the circularity of the subscale correlations within the separate interpersonal trait and interpersonal attitude models. The setting will be online (via SONA). Participants will be 100 BSc Psychology students who are enrolled in modules for which participant pool credit can be earned in return for taking part in the study.