Adult Attachment Theory

“Adult attachment, sexual satisfaction, and relationship satisfaction: A study of married couples”
This article explained the importance of sexuality in most romantic relationships, and that society implies that marriage is the main relationship in which sex occurs (Sprecher, Christopher, & Cate, 2006). The article then goes on to discuss the research and findings of psychologists that have studied attachment behavior, like Bowlby, and Hazan and Shaver. The three important factors that affect romantic relationships in adulthood are attachment, caregiving, and sexual mating (Shaver, Hazan & Bradshaw, 1988).
This article goes on to explain the links between sexual and marital satisfaction. It was also found that the link between sexual and

marital satisfaction can be stronger for some people. Research also suggests that anxious individuals tend to use sexual experiences as a barometer of their relationship quality, whereas avoidant individuals do not. After this, the article points out limitations on past research of attachment, and continues to go into the study by Butzer & Campbell (2008).
Attachment anxiety is when anxious people put off their partner's sexual needs, are distracted by relational concerns during sex, fear rejection and abandonment, and experience anxiety regarding sexual experiences (Birnbaum, 2007; Brennan et al., 1998; Davis et al., 2006), and it was hypothesized that more anxiously attached individuals would report low levels of satisfaction with their sexual relationship, along with avoidantly attached individuals (Butzer & Campbell, 2008).
The aim of this study was to was to further research attachment behavior in adulthood with relation to adult romantic relationships (Butzer & Campbell, 2008).

In this study, there is a sample of 116 married couples, ages 21-75, who completed self-report questionnaires about adult attachment, marital, and sexual satisfaction (Butzer & Campbell, 2008). After analysis of the answers, the results show that people with higher levels of anxiety or avoidance claimed that they had lower levels of sexual satisfaction, which supported the hypothesis. These results suggest that attachment is linked in “theoretically predictable ways to marital and sexual satisfaction” (Butzer & Campbell,

2008).

“Psychometric Properties of a Translated Korean Adult Attachment Measure”
This study begins by discussing attachment theory and its significance in Western research, and explains its interest in studying attachment theory in a non-Western country as well as introduce prominent researchers of attachment theory.

Similar to previous studies, attachment is measured through use of questionnaires. This study used an adapted version of the “Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised scale” to investigate adult attachment in Korea. In this study, the participants were a large sample of 1,374 college students ranging from the ages of 18 to 47. The results of the CFA showed that the Korean version of the test was heavily influenced by response set factors, which implies that attachment does not have relevance across different cultures and, furthermore, attachment measures “are biased toward Western ways of thinking” (Rothbaum et al., 2000). However, it may be argued that the adult attachment measure itself should be blamed for the lack of the equivalence (Kim et al.,

2011).

“Adult attachment style and anxiety – The mediating role of emotion regulation”
This article discusses the role of regulation of emotions in maintaining anxiety disorders, however aims to learn more about what causes “emotion dysregulation”. The article goes on to explain that “attachment style is related to emotion regulation and anxiety symptoms.” This article also discussed the relationship between attachment, anxiety, and adult relationships (Nielson et al., 2017).
In the study, there were a total of 147 participants were assessed with Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised (ECR-R) (both of these have been used in the other studies mentioned) and Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS). Along with this, statistical analysis was conducted. The results of this study showed a connection between anxiety and also found that attachment anxiety was actually brought out by emotion dysregulation. Attachment avoidance was not significantly related to anxiety, however.
This article then explained the limitations of the study. The article concluded that insecure attachment isn't important in anxiety disorders, but that attachment anxiety is important (Nielson et al., 2017).