The Relation Between Attachment and Identity: Focusing on Attachment Representations, In-Depth Exploration, and Meaning Making

ABSTRACT

Secure attachment relationships with important others (one type of emotional bond) can lead to more adaptive identity formation. We studied the relation of attachment representations with meaning-making and in-depth exploration, two factors contributing to identity formation. Meaning-making is a process of understanding identity from past events, while in-depth exploration is a process of deeply considering identity issues. Our participants were Japanese university students (N = 100; male = 50%; M_age = 20.91; SD = 1.35). We measured attachment representations, positive and negative meaning-making, and in-depth exploration using interviews and questionnaires. The results revealed that secure attachment representations related to positive meaning-making but did not relate to negative meaning-making or in-depth exploration. Overall, this study highlights that individuals with secure representations found a positive meaning in their identity when narrating their past events.

KEYWORDS:

• Attachment representations
• identity development
• identity process
• narrative identity

Acknowledgments

We thank the participants for providing valuable data and narratives. We also thank the members of Developmental Psychology Lab in Hiroshima University for advising this study and coding our data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available from the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/6kx4a/).

Additional information

Funding

This study received no funding.