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The relationship between adult romantic attachment and compliance
Personality and Individual Differences 45 (2008) 276–280
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The relationship between adult romantic attachment and compliance Gisli H. Gudjonsson a,*, Jon Fridrik Sigurdsson b, Linda Bara Lydsdottir c, Halldora Olafsdottir b a b c
Department of Psychology (PO 78), Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, Denmark Hill, London SE5 8AF, England, UK Division of Psychiatry, University of Iceland/Landspitali-University Hospital, Reykjavik, Iceland Division of Psychiatry, Landspitali-University Hospital, Reykjavik, Iceland
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 9 January 2008 Received in revised form 30 March 2008 Accepted 8 April 2008 Available online 3 June 2008 Keywords: Adult romantic attachment Compliance Self-esteem Depression Anxiety Stress
a b s t r a c t Compliance has been mainly researched in the context of custodial interrogation and peer pressure to commit offences. In the present study compliance was studied in relation to adult romantic attachment. It was hypothesized that the relationship between compliance and romantic attachment would be strongest with maladaptive attachment and lowest with secure attachment. Three hundred and seventy seven pregnant women attending antenatal clinics at Primary Health Care Centres completed the Gudjonsson Compliance Scale (GCS), the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS), the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, and the Multi-item measure of adult Romantic Attachment, which consisted of Anxious and Avoidant dimensions (and additional quadrant framework consisting of Secure, Preoccupied, Dismissing, and Fearful attachment types). Compliance was significantly related to both Anxious and Avoidant attachment after controlling for self-esteem, depression, anxiety, and stress. A further analysis showed that compliance was highest among the Fearful type and lowest among the Secure type. The findings suggest that compliance is an important factor in relation to maladaptive adult romantic attachment. Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction The concept of compliance is central to the study of social influence (Bond & Smith, 1996). The purpose of the present paper is to investigate the relationship between compliance, as measured by the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale (GCS; Gudjonsson, 1989, 1997), and adult attachment. The previous work carried out on the GCS has focused primarily on compliance in interrogative situations (Gudjonsson, 2003, 2006; Sigurdsson & Gudjonsson, 1996) and susceptibility to being led, manipulated or pressured into criminal activity (Gudjonsson & Sigurdsson, 2004, 2007). More recently it has also focused on the vulnerabilities of certain groups to comply with pressure from others, such as patients with persecutory delusions (Levy & Gudjonsson, 2006), patients with Asperger’s Syndrome (North, Russell, & Gudjonsson, in press), and the presence of symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) (Gudjonsson, Sigurdsson, Einarsson, Bragason & Newton, in press-a). Anxiety, low self-esteem and introversion have been shown to be moderately correlated with compliance (Gudjonsson & Sigurdsson, 2003; Gudjonsson, Sigurdsson, Brynjolfsdottir, & Hreinsdottir, 2002; Gudjonsson, Sigurdsson, & Einarsson, 2004), and these may explain some of the group differences found. Gudjonsson (1989) defines compliance as ‘‘the general tendency or susceptibility of individuals to comply with requests and obey instructions that they would rather not do, for some * Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 20 78480768; fax: +44 20 78480680. E-mail address: [email protected] (G.H. Gudjonsson). 0191-8869/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2008.04.010
immediate instrumental gain” (pp. 535–536). Within this definition compliance can occur in different situations. Gudjonsson, Sigurdsson, Einarsson and Einarsson (in press-b) argue that although there are important distinctions between compliance in impersonal (e.g. during custodial interrogation) and personal (e.g. complying with the request of a close friend or a loved person) settings, both are significantly related to the broader psychological construct of compliance. For example, a principal component analysis of a specially constructed Situational Compliance Scale (SCS) showed that personal and impersonal relationship types of compliance items loaded on separate factors, but both correlated significantly with the GCS. The underlying psychological constructs were thought to reflect eagerness to please and avoidance of conflict and confrontation, which are the two factors that load most highly on the GCS (Gudjonsson, 1989). However, the authors argued that fear of emotional rejection and/or abandonment may also play an important part in the motivation behind compliance within personal relationships. Loving relationships, whether ‘passionate’ or ‘companionate’, both have important attachment-related functions, which may be threatened by fear of rejection and abandonment (Reis & Aron, 2008). There is evidence that an attachment theory framework can be used to investigate individual differences in compliant behaviour. For example, Impett and Peplau (2002) studied the relationship of compliance with unwanted sex among women and attachment styles of Anxiety and Avoidance. Anxiously attached women most commonly consented to unwanted sex and often cited fears that their partner would lose interest in them if they did not comply
G.H. Gudjonsson et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 45 (2008) 276–280
with their request for sex. Some of the reasons given for consenting to unwanted sex (e.g. feeling obliged to have sex with a partner, fear of rejection, finding it easier to engage in sex than saying ‘no’), suggested that both anxiety and avoidant attachment styles are relevant to studying compliant behaviour. Attachment styles have been shown to be highly stable from infancy into early adulthood, although they are subject to change depending upon salient life experiences (Waters, Merrick, Treboux, Crowell, & Albersheim, 2000). Bartholomew (1990) suggests four attachment types: Secure, Preoccupied, Dismissing and Fearful. Only the Secure type is associated with a positive emotion. Insecure attachments are partly mediated by low self-esteem, with the Preoccupied and Fearful types being associated with lower self-esteem than the Secure and Dismissing types (Pickering, Simpson, & Bentall, 2008). Pickering et al. found that paranoid beliefs, but not hallucinations, were associated with insecure attachment. Negative self-esteem, the anticipation of a threatening event, and a perception of others as powerful, mediated the relationship between attachment insecurity and persecutory paranoia. Brennan, Clark, and Shaver (1998) have reduced Bartholomew’s four types into two dimensions: Anxiety (fear of rejection and abandonment) and Avoidance, which is made up of discomfort with closeness and emotional dependency. Brennan et al. (1998) developed a 38-item questionnaire, which measures the Anxiety and Avoidance dimensions in adult romantic attachment. Four clusters can also be obtained to calculate the number of people who fall into each of Bartholomew’s four types (Secure, Preoccupied, Dismissing and Fearful). The research question being asked in this study is whether there is a significant relationship between certain adult attachment types (i.e. Anxiety and Avoidance – and Bartholomew’s four types) and compliance, as measured by the GCS. Since compliance, as measured by the GCS, is principally related to eagerness to please and avoidance of conflict and confrontation (Gudjonsson, 1989), we hypothesized that high negative emotions to do with adult attachment (i.e. high on Avoidant and Anxious attachments) will correlate positively with compliance. In addition, using Bartholomew’s four types we hypothesized that out of the four types compliance will be highest among the Fearful type, which is comprised of high Avoidance and high Anxiety, and lowest among the Secure type (i.e. Low Avoidance and Low Anxiety). In view of previous research showing a significant relationship between compliance, anxiety and self-esteem (Gudjonsson et al., 2002), we included in the present study the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS; Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995) and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES; Rosenberg, 1965). This will assist us in understanding the relative contribution of each variable to compliance.
2. Methodology 2.1. Participants The participants were 377 pregnant women attending antenatal clinics at ten Primary Health Care Centres in Reykjavik, Iceland. Their mean age was 29 years (SD = 4.9, range 18–44). The participants had completed a number of tests as a part of a national study into the mental health and wellbeing of women during and after pregnancy, and protective factors, such as interpersonal relationships and secure attachment. 2.2. Measures The Multi-item measure of adult Romantic Attachment (MMARA; Brennan et al., 1998). This is a 36-item inventory, which is rated
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on a 7-point scale (1 = ‘disagree strongly’ to 7 = ‘agree strongly’), which contains two independent subscales – ‘Avoidance’ (Alpha = 0.94) and ‘Anxiety’ (Alpha = 0.91). Each subscale consists of 18 items. The correlation between the two scales is low (r = 0.11). The ‘Avoidance’ scale measures discomfort with interpersonal closeness and disclosure, avoidance of intimacy, and need for self-reliance. The ‘Anxiety’ subscale measures preoccupation with attachment and relationships, jealousy, clinging to partners, and fear of rejection and abandonment. Fear of rejection and abandonment are central to the concept of ‘Anxiety’ attachment. Brennan et al. (1998) used the two higher-order factors, romantic anxiety and avoidance, to cluster participants into Bartholomew’s (1990) four attachment types according to guidelines suggested by Hair, Anderson, Tatham, and Black (1995) and provide a statistical formula for categorizing the scores obtained on the 38-item scale into the four attachment types: Secure, Preoccupied, Dismissing and Fearful. This additional cluster based categorization was used in the present study to provide a more detailed analysis of the relationship between compliance and attachment types. In view of the nature of the sample we chose to investigate romantic (i.e. intimate and domain specific) attachment rather than using a global measure of attachment. The English version of the Scale was translated into Icelandic and then back translated from Icelandic into English by another translator. The Gudjonsson Compliance Scale (GCS; Gudjonsson, 1989, 1997). This is a 20 item self-report scale which measures the extent to which an individual is prone to comply with the requests of others. The GCS is comprised of true/false statements. Scores range from 0 to 20, with a higher score indicating greater compliance. The Scale was developed for two different purposes. First, to identify persons who are susceptible to making a false confession under interrogative pressure. Secondly, to identify those who are susceptible to being pressured into crime by peers and others. The Scale’s validity has been documented in both of these areas (Gudjonsson, 2003, 2006; Gudjonsson & Sigurdsson, 2007). The Cronbach’s alpha coefficients have ranged between 0.71 and 0.75 in different studies (Gudjonsson, 2003). Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS; Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995). This is a 42-item self-report measure of depression, anxiety and stress. Each item is rated on a four point scale (0–3; never, sometimes, often, nearly always) and indicates how much each statement applied to the participant during the previous week. The three subscales, each consisting of 14 items, have been shown to have good reliability and convergent and discriminant validity (Crawford & Henry, 2003; Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995). The range of possible scores for each of the three subscales is between 0 and 42. The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES; Rosenberg, 1965). This 10-item scale consists of positive and negative self-appraisal statements rated on a four point scale ranging from ‘‘strongly agree” to ‘‘strongly disagree”. Scores range from 10 to 40 with higher scores reflecting low self-esteem. The scale has good reliability and validity (Gudjonsson & Sigurdsson, 2003). 2.3. Procedure This is a part of a larger study on pre- and post-natal depression in Iceland. The pregnant women were approached when they attended the first check-up at a Primary Health Care Centre in Reykjavik around the 12th week of pregnancy and asked to participate in a study of pre- and post-natal depression and the development of their children from birth to five years of age. They were provided with information about the study which they took home with them and when they attended the next check-up ses-
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sion, at around the 16th week of pregnancy, they signed a consent form and completed the psychological tests, which were administered primarily in order to screen for pre-natal depression. This was the first of at least eight appointments they agreed to keep during the next five years. The study was approved by the National Bioethics Committee, the Icelandic Data Protection Authority, the Landspitali-University Hospital in Reykjavik and the Primary Health Care Authorities.
Table 2 Summary of multiple regression analysis (hierarchical) for the psychological variables predicting compliance Predictor variables Block 1 Depression Anxiety Stress Self-esteem Block 2 Depression Anxiety Stress Self-esteem Romantic attachment anxiety Romantic attachment avoidance
3. Results Table 1 shows the mean scores on the psychological tests, the Cronbach Alpha for each test, and the correlations between the test scores. All the test scores correlated significantly (r = 0.28–0.74). The highest correlations were between the three subscales of the DASS scale, Depression, Anxiety and Stress scales (r = 0.64–0.74). The GCS correlated moderately with MMARA Anxiety (r = 0.37) and Avoidance (r = 0.35). It also correlated with self-esteem (r = 0.47). All the measures had a satisfactory Cronbach Alpha (0.76–0.90). In order to investigate how much each of the variables, depression, anxiety, stress, self-esteem and romantic anxiety and avoidance (predictor variables), contributed to the variance in compliance, hierarchical multiple regression, using forced entry method, was carried out. Compliance was used as the dependent measure in the analysis. Depression, anxiety, stress, and self-esteem were entered simultaneously in the first block and anxiety and avoidance attachment were added in the second block. In both the regression analyses the collinearity diagnostics were adequate (minimum tolerance = .36). As Table 2 shows, both models were significant. In Block 1 only self-esteem contributed significantly to the variance in compliance, but in Block 2, self-esteem and romantic attachment anxiety and avoidance all contributed significantly to the model. The number of participants who fell into Bartholomew’s four types were as follows: Secure (N = 242, 67%), Fearful (36, 10%), Preoccupied (56, 16%), and Dismissing (25, 7%). Table 3 gives the mean scores for the psychological tests according to the four types. Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was performed on the five dependent variables (compliance, self-esteem, depression, anxiety and stress) and four independent variables (Secure, Fearful, Preoccupied, and Dismissing) to test for overall significant effects after taking into effect the relationship between the dependent measures. There was an overall significant group effect (Pillai’s trace = 0.29; F = 7.00, p < .001; partial eta squared = 0.10). Univariate analyses were then carried out on each of the dependent variables and the results are given in Table 3. Significant differences between the four attachment types emerged on all the psychological measures. On all the psychological tests the scores were highest with regard to the Fearful type and lowest on the Secure type (all were significant according to Sheffé tests). For compliance, the Secure type differed significantly on Sheffé tests from the Fear-
*
Beta
t-value
Adjusted R2
0.06 0.06 0.15 0.40
0.76 0.90 1.93 6.98***
Block1 0.23*** F(4, 344) = 26.59
0.11 0.04 0.11 0.33 0.15 0.12
1.40 0.64 1.45 5.61*** 2.56* 2.11*
Block 2 0.26*** F(2, 342) = 7.30
p < 0.05. p < 0.001.
***
ful (p < 0.001) and Preoccupied (p < 0.001) types. The effect sizes in compliance between the Secure and Fearful and Preoccupied types were 1.03 (‘high’) and 0.62 (‘moderate’), respectively (Cohen, 1988). 4. Discussion The present findings support the hypothesis formulated in Section 1. Compliance is significantly related to maladaptive attachment as measured by the MMARA. Both the Anxiety and Avoidance attachment measures were associated with compliance. As far as the four Bartholomew’s types are concerned, the participants in the Secure attachment group, as predicted, were significantly less compliant than the Fearful and Preoccupied types. These are important findings. The main implication is that women, who are insecure in terms of their attachment, are more likely to be compliant in terms of their personality. This makes them potentially more vulnerable to comply with unreasonable requests or demands in ‘personal’ and ‘impersonal’ relationships. In terms of personal relationships their insecurity may result in them not being able to stand up to their partner (e.g., giving in to unreasonable requests), which could put a strain on their relationship (Gudjonsson et al., in press-b). The present findings suggest the relationship between attachment and compliance is partially mediated by self-esteem, although after controlling for self-esteem in a hierarchical analysis, anxious and avoidant attachments still predicted compliance. The finding that the Fearful type scored highest on all the psychological measures in the present study, suggests that they have the greatest number of psychological problems, including anxiety, depression and low self-esteem. This fits in well with the finding of Brennan et al. (1998) that the Fearful type scored highest of all four groups on a scale measuring negative postcoital emotions. This
Table 1 Mean scores, standard deviations, Cronbach Alpha, and correlations between the tests Psychological test
Mean (SD)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
2.9 (1.0) 2.3 (0.9) 9.8 (3.5) 16.6 (5.3) 3.3 (4.7) 3.0 (4.0) 7.1 (6.1)
–
0.46* –
0.37* 0.35* –
0.47* 0.44* 0.47* –
0.46* 0.49* 0.31* 0.55* –
0.39* 0.36* 0.28* 0.41* 0.64* –
0.44* 0.46* 0.35* 0.51* 0.74* 0.66* –
0.87
0.89
0.76
0.88
0.90
0.82
0.90
Romantic attachment anxiety Romantic attachment avoidance Compliance Self-esteem Depression Anxiety Stress
Cronbach alpha *
p < 0.001.
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G.H. Gudjonsson et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 45 (2008) 276–280 Table 3 Mean scores and standard deviations on the psychological tests in each of Bartholomew’s attachment types Psychological scale
Bartholomew’s attachment types Compliance Self-esteem Depression Anxiety Stress *
Secure
Fearful
Preoccupied
Dismissing
Mean (SD) (N)
Mean (SD) (N)
Mean (SD) (N)
Mean (SD) (N)
8.9 15.2 2.0 2.0 5.5
12.1 20.9 8.0 5.9 11.9
11.1 19.3 5.2 5.0 9.9
10.5 18.0 4.7 3.5 9.3
(3.1) (4.4) (2.8) (2.4) (5.0)
(241) (237) (236) (237) (233)
(3.1) (5.9) (8.1) (7.2) (8.5)
(36) (34) (34) (35) (35)
(4.0) (5.7) (5.4) (4.3) (6.2)
(56) (55) (54) (56) (53)
(3.6) (6.3) (5.4) (4.5) (5.6)
(25) (24) (24) (24) (24)
F- value
14.26* 21.06* 25.88* 18.66* 20.08*
p < 0.001 level.
type is also more likely to comply with unwanted sex (Impett & Peplau, 2002). Gudjonsson et al. (in press-b) argue in relation to their research into differences between ‘personal’ and ‘impersonal’ relationship compliance that the thought of wishing to decline the request of a loved one, and the associated fear of emotional rejection, generates a state of mindlessness, followed by increased compliance. Impett and Peplau’s (2002) findings support this hypothesis. They found that anxiously attached women were overly sensitive to rejection and consented to unwanted sex as a way of avoiding conflict and confrontation with a partner, which supports the previous findings of Downey, Freitas, Michaelis, and Khouri (1998). In the present study, the Fearful and Preoccupied types were most compliant, which suggests that it is the combination of fear of rejection/abandonment, and insecurities in romantic relationships, which is linked to susceptibility to compliance. Of course, the present findings are limited to romantic attachment, but there is likely to be an overlap with insecure attachment in other relationships (Waters et al., 2000). Indeed, Pickering et al. (2008), using the Bartholomew and Horowitz (1991) relationship questionnaire (RQ), which also measures attachment both categorically and dimensionally, found that paranoid beliefs were significantly elevated among the Fearful and Preoccupied types in a similar way as found for compliance in the present study. The key mediating variable for both attachment anxiety and avoidance was negative self-esteem. Wearden, Peters, Berry, Barrowclough, and Liversidge (2008), using the Psychosis Attachment Measure (PAM) for measuring global attachment (romantic attachment was deliberately excluded), found that after controlling for the confounding effect of negative affect, negative self-evaluative core beliefs were significantly correlated with anxious attachment but not with avoidant attachment. In the present study, attachment anxiety and avoidance were moderately correlated (r = .46, p < 0.001), which is in contrast to previous studies using the MMARA (r = .11; Brennan et al., 1998), the RQ (r = .11; Pickering et al., 2008), and the PAM (r = .08; Wearden et al., 2008). One possible explanation for the moderately high correlation between anxiety and avoidance attachment styles in the present study relates to the sample studied (i.e. pregnant women). It is possible that their pregnancy affected the attachment scores. It is noteworthy that the proportion of women who fell into the Secure category (67%) in the present study is high in comparison to previous studies (e.g. Brennan et al., 1998; Pickering et al., 2008). Bartholomew’s four types of attachment can be construed as a quadrant framework similar to that described within Eysenck’s theory of personality (Brand, 1997; Eysenck & Eysenck, 1975). Using Eysenck’s quadrant framework, Gudjonsson et al. (2004) found that unstable (anxious) introverts were most compliant in their temperaments and stable extraverts the least compliant. In the present study, the Fearful quadrant is made of a combination of high Anxiety and high Avoidance from the MMARA, whereas the reverse was for the Secure type (i.e. low Anxiety and low
Avoidance). It would be interesting in future research to investigate how Eysenck’s quadrant framework overlaps with that of Bartholomew’s four types. The present findings suggest that there may be considerable overlap between the two quadrant frameworks; adult romantic attachment may be closely linked to personality where stable extraverts fit into the Secure type and unstable-introverts into the Fearful type. The present study has a number of limitations, including the sample (i.e. pregnant women), the self-report nature of the findings, and the fact that adult attachment is measured in the context of romantic (specific domain) rather than as a general attachment predisposition. In spite of these limitations, the present findings provide important new results, which are consistent with the recent work of Pickering et al. (2008) into insecure attachment and paranoia and employing a more global measure of attachment among male and female university students. Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the research assistants, Þorbjörg Sveinsdóttir, Pétur Ingi Pétursson and María Hrönn Nikulásdóttir, for organizing the data collection and computing the data, midwives in the Primary Health Care of the Capital Area for their co-operation and assistance with collection of the data, and the pregnant women for their participation. The authors are grateful to the Icelandic Centre for Research (Grant No. 050427021), the Landspitali Science Fund, the Wyeth Research Fund, and the University of Iceland Research Fund, for financial support. References Bartholomew, K. (1990). Avoidance of intimacy: An attachment perspective. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 7, 147–178. Bartholomew, K., & Horowitz, L. M. (1991). Attachment styles among young adults: A test of a four-category model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 226–244. Bond, R., & Smith, P. B. (1996). Culture and conformity: A meta-analysis of studies using Asch’s (1952b, 1956) line judgment task. Psychological Bulletin, 119, 111–137. Brand, C. R. (1997). Hans Eysenck’s personality dimensions: Their number and nature. In H. Nyborg (Ed.), The scientific study of human nature (pp. 17–35). Oxford: Elsevier. Brennan, K. A., Clark, C. L., & Shaver, P. R. (1998). Self-report measurement of adult attachment. In J. A. Simpson & W. S. Rholes (Eds.), Attachment theory and close relationships (pp. 46–76). New York: Guildford Press. Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioural sciences. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Erlbaum. Crawford, J. R., & Henry, J. D. (2003). The Depression anxiety stress scales (DASS): Normative data and latent structure in a large non-clinical sample. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 42, 111–131. Downey, G., Freitas, A. L., Michaelis, B., & Khouri, H. (1998). The self-fulfilling prophecy in close relationships: Rejection sensitivity and rejection by romantic partners. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 545–560. Eysenck, H. J., & Eysenck, S. B. G. (1975). Manual of the Eysenck personality questionnaire. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Gudjonsson, G. H. (1989). Compliance in an interrogation situation: A new scale. Personality and Individual Differences, 10, 535–540. Gudjonsson, G. H. (1997). The Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scales Manual. Hove: Psychology Press.
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Personality and Individual Differences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid
The relationship between adult romantic attachment and compliance Gisli H. Gudjonsson a,*, Jon Fridrik Sigurdsson b, Linda Bara Lydsdottir c, Halldora Olafsdottir b a b c
Department of Psychology (PO 78), Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, Denmark Hill, London SE5 8AF, England, UK Division of Psychiatry, University of Iceland/Landspitali-University Hospital, Reykjavik, Iceland Division of Psychiatry, Landspitali-University Hospital, Reykjavik, Iceland
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 9 January 2008 Received in revised form 30 March 2008 Accepted 8 April 2008 Available online 3 June 2008 Keywords: Adult romantic attachment Compliance Self-esteem Depression Anxiety Stress
a b s t r a c t Compliance has been mainly researched in the context of custodial interrogation and peer pressure to commit offences. In the present study compliance was studied in relation to adult romantic attachment. It was hypothesized that the relationship between compliance and romantic attachment would be strongest with maladaptive attachment and lowest with secure attachment. Three hundred and seventy seven pregnant women attending antenatal clinics at Primary Health Care Centres completed the Gudjonsson Compliance Scale (GCS), the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS), the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, and the Multi-item measure of adult Romantic Attachment, which consisted of Anxious and Avoidant dimensions (and additional quadrant framework consisting of Secure, Preoccupied, Dismissing, and Fearful attachment types). Compliance was significantly related to both Anxious and Avoidant attachment after controlling for self-esteem, depression, anxiety, and stress. A further analysis showed that compliance was highest among the Fearful type and lowest among the Secure type. The findings suggest that compliance is an important factor in relation to maladaptive adult romantic attachment. Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction The concept of compliance is central to the study of social influence (Bond & Smith, 1996). The purpose of the present paper is to investigate the relationship between compliance, as measured by the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale (GCS; Gudjonsson, 1989, 1997), and adult attachment. The previous work carried out on the GCS has focused primarily on compliance in interrogative situations (Gudjonsson, 2003, 2006; Sigurdsson & Gudjonsson, 1996) and susceptibility to being led, manipulated or pressured into criminal activity (Gudjonsson & Sigurdsson, 2004, 2007). More recently it has also focused on the vulnerabilities of certain groups to comply with pressure from others, such as patients with persecutory delusions (Levy & Gudjonsson, 2006), patients with Asperger’s Syndrome (North, Russell, & Gudjonsson, in press), and the presence of symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) (Gudjonsson, Sigurdsson, Einarsson, Bragason & Newton, in press-a). Anxiety, low self-esteem and introversion have been shown to be moderately correlated with compliance (Gudjonsson & Sigurdsson, 2003; Gudjonsson, Sigurdsson, Brynjolfsdottir, & Hreinsdottir, 2002; Gudjonsson, Sigurdsson, & Einarsson, 2004), and these may explain some of the group differences found. Gudjonsson (1989) defines compliance as ‘‘the general tendency or susceptibility of individuals to comply with requests and obey instructions that they would rather not do, for some * Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 20 78480768; fax: +44 20 78480680. E-mail address: [email protected] (G.H. Gudjonsson). 0191-8869/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2008.04.010
immediate instrumental gain” (pp. 535–536). Within this definition compliance can occur in different situations. Gudjonsson, Sigurdsson, Einarsson and Einarsson (in press-b) argue that although there are important distinctions between compliance in impersonal (e.g. during custodial interrogation) and personal (e.g. complying with the request of a close friend or a loved person) settings, both are significantly related to the broader psychological construct of compliance. For example, a principal component analysis of a specially constructed Situational Compliance Scale (SCS) showed that personal and impersonal relationship types of compliance items loaded on separate factors, but both correlated significantly with the GCS. The underlying psychological constructs were thought to reflect eagerness to please and avoidance of conflict and confrontation, which are the two factors that load most highly on the GCS (Gudjonsson, 1989). However, the authors argued that fear of emotional rejection and/or abandonment may also play an important part in the motivation behind compliance within personal relationships. Loving relationships, whether ‘passionate’ or ‘companionate’, both have important attachment-related functions, which may be threatened by fear of rejection and abandonment (Reis & Aron, 2008). There is evidence that an attachment theory framework can be used to investigate individual differences in compliant behaviour. For example, Impett and Peplau (2002) studied the relationship of compliance with unwanted sex among women and attachment styles of Anxiety and Avoidance. Anxiously attached women most commonly consented to unwanted sex and often cited fears that their partner would lose interest in them if they did not comply
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with their request for sex. Some of the reasons given for consenting to unwanted sex (e.g. feeling obliged to have sex with a partner, fear of rejection, finding it easier to engage in sex than saying ‘no’), suggested that both anxiety and avoidant attachment styles are relevant to studying compliant behaviour. Attachment styles have been shown to be highly stable from infancy into early adulthood, although they are subject to change depending upon salient life experiences (Waters, Merrick, Treboux, Crowell, & Albersheim, 2000). Bartholomew (1990) suggests four attachment types: Secure, Preoccupied, Dismissing and Fearful. Only the Secure type is associated with a positive emotion. Insecure attachments are partly mediated by low self-esteem, with the Preoccupied and Fearful types being associated with lower self-esteem than the Secure and Dismissing types (Pickering, Simpson, & Bentall, 2008). Pickering et al. found that paranoid beliefs, but not hallucinations, were associated with insecure attachment. Negative self-esteem, the anticipation of a threatening event, and a perception of others as powerful, mediated the relationship between attachment insecurity and persecutory paranoia. Brennan, Clark, and Shaver (1998) have reduced Bartholomew’s four types into two dimensions: Anxiety (fear of rejection and abandonment) and Avoidance, which is made up of discomfort with closeness and emotional dependency. Brennan et al. (1998) developed a 38-item questionnaire, which measures the Anxiety and Avoidance dimensions in adult romantic attachment. Four clusters can also be obtained to calculate the number of people who fall into each of Bartholomew’s four types (Secure, Preoccupied, Dismissing and Fearful). The research question being asked in this study is whether there is a significant relationship between certain adult attachment types (i.e. Anxiety and Avoidance – and Bartholomew’s four types) and compliance, as measured by the GCS. Since compliance, as measured by the GCS, is principally related to eagerness to please and avoidance of conflict and confrontation (Gudjonsson, 1989), we hypothesized that high negative emotions to do with adult attachment (i.e. high on Avoidant and Anxious attachments) will correlate positively with compliance. In addition, using Bartholomew’s four types we hypothesized that out of the four types compliance will be highest among the Fearful type, which is comprised of high Avoidance and high Anxiety, and lowest among the Secure type (i.e. Low Avoidance and Low Anxiety). In view of previous research showing a significant relationship between compliance, anxiety and self-esteem (Gudjonsson et al., 2002), we included in the present study the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS; Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995) and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES; Rosenberg, 1965). This will assist us in understanding the relative contribution of each variable to compliance.
2. Methodology 2.1. Participants The participants were 377 pregnant women attending antenatal clinics at ten Primary Health Care Centres in Reykjavik, Iceland. Their mean age was 29 years (SD = 4.9, range 18–44). The participants had completed a number of tests as a part of a national study into the mental health and wellbeing of women during and after pregnancy, and protective factors, such as interpersonal relationships and secure attachment. 2.2. Measures The Multi-item measure of adult Romantic Attachment (MMARA; Brennan et al., 1998). This is a 36-item inventory, which is rated
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on a 7-point scale (1 = ‘disagree strongly’ to 7 = ‘agree strongly’), which contains two independent subscales – ‘Avoidance’ (Alpha = 0.94) and ‘Anxiety’ (Alpha = 0.91). Each subscale consists of 18 items. The correlation between the two scales is low (r = 0.11). The ‘Avoidance’ scale measures discomfort with interpersonal closeness and disclosure, avoidance of intimacy, and need for self-reliance. The ‘Anxiety’ subscale measures preoccupation with attachment and relationships, jealousy, clinging to partners, and fear of rejection and abandonment. Fear of rejection and abandonment are central to the concept of ‘Anxiety’ attachment. Brennan et al. (1998) used the two higher-order factors, romantic anxiety and avoidance, to cluster participants into Bartholomew’s (1990) four attachment types according to guidelines suggested by Hair, Anderson, Tatham, and Black (1995) and provide a statistical formula for categorizing the scores obtained on the 38-item scale into the four attachment types: Secure, Preoccupied, Dismissing and Fearful. This additional cluster based categorization was used in the present study to provide a more detailed analysis of the relationship between compliance and attachment types. In view of the nature of the sample we chose to investigate romantic (i.e. intimate and domain specific) attachment rather than using a global measure of attachment. The English version of the Scale was translated into Icelandic and then back translated from Icelandic into English by another translator. The Gudjonsson Compliance Scale (GCS; Gudjonsson, 1989, 1997). This is a 20 item self-report scale which measures the extent to which an individual is prone to comply with the requests of others. The GCS is comprised of true/false statements. Scores range from 0 to 20, with a higher score indicating greater compliance. The Scale was developed for two different purposes. First, to identify persons who are susceptible to making a false confession under interrogative pressure. Secondly, to identify those who are susceptible to being pressured into crime by peers and others. The Scale’s validity has been documented in both of these areas (Gudjonsson, 2003, 2006; Gudjonsson & Sigurdsson, 2007). The Cronbach’s alpha coefficients have ranged between 0.71 and 0.75 in different studies (Gudjonsson, 2003). Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS; Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995). This is a 42-item self-report measure of depression, anxiety and stress. Each item is rated on a four point scale (0–3; never, sometimes, often, nearly always) and indicates how much each statement applied to the participant during the previous week. The three subscales, each consisting of 14 items, have been shown to have good reliability and convergent and discriminant validity (Crawford & Henry, 2003; Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995). The range of possible scores for each of the three subscales is between 0 and 42. The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES; Rosenberg, 1965). This 10-item scale consists of positive and negative self-appraisal statements rated on a four point scale ranging from ‘‘strongly agree” to ‘‘strongly disagree”. Scores range from 10 to 40 with higher scores reflecting low self-esteem. The scale has good reliability and validity (Gudjonsson & Sigurdsson, 2003). 2.3. Procedure This is a part of a larger study on pre- and post-natal depression in Iceland. The pregnant women were approached when they attended the first check-up at a Primary Health Care Centre in Reykjavik around the 12th week of pregnancy and asked to participate in a study of pre- and post-natal depression and the development of their children from birth to five years of age. They were provided with information about the study which they took home with them and when they attended the next check-up ses-
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sion, at around the 16th week of pregnancy, they signed a consent form and completed the psychological tests, which were administered primarily in order to screen for pre-natal depression. This was the first of at least eight appointments they agreed to keep during the next five years. The study was approved by the National Bioethics Committee, the Icelandic Data Protection Authority, the Landspitali-University Hospital in Reykjavik and the Primary Health Care Authorities.
Table 2 Summary of multiple regression analysis (hierarchical) for the psychological variables predicting compliance Predictor variables Block 1 Depression Anxiety Stress Self-esteem Block 2 Depression Anxiety Stress Self-esteem Romantic attachment anxiety Romantic attachment avoidance
3. Results Table 1 shows the mean scores on the psychological tests, the Cronbach Alpha for each test, and the correlations between the test scores. All the test scores correlated significantly (r = 0.28–0.74). The highest correlations were between the three subscales of the DASS scale, Depression, Anxiety and Stress scales (r = 0.64–0.74). The GCS correlated moderately with MMARA Anxiety (r = 0.37) and Avoidance (r = 0.35). It also correlated with self-esteem (r = 0.47). All the measures had a satisfactory Cronbach Alpha (0.76–0.90). In order to investigate how much each of the variables, depression, anxiety, stress, self-esteem and romantic anxiety and avoidance (predictor variables), contributed to the variance in compliance, hierarchical multiple regression, using forced entry method, was carried out. Compliance was used as the dependent measure in the analysis. Depression, anxiety, stress, and self-esteem were entered simultaneously in the first block and anxiety and avoidance attachment were added in the second block. In both the regression analyses the collinearity diagnostics were adequate (minimum tolerance = .36). As Table 2 shows, both models were significant. In Block 1 only self-esteem contributed significantly to the variance in compliance, but in Block 2, self-esteem and romantic attachment anxiety and avoidance all contributed significantly to the model. The number of participants who fell into Bartholomew’s four types were as follows: Secure (N = 242, 67%), Fearful (36, 10%), Preoccupied (56, 16%), and Dismissing (25, 7%). Table 3 gives the mean scores for the psychological tests according to the four types. Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was performed on the five dependent variables (compliance, self-esteem, depression, anxiety and stress) and four independent variables (Secure, Fearful, Preoccupied, and Dismissing) to test for overall significant effects after taking into effect the relationship between the dependent measures. There was an overall significant group effect (Pillai’s trace = 0.29; F = 7.00, p < .001; partial eta squared = 0.10). Univariate analyses were then carried out on each of the dependent variables and the results are given in Table 3. Significant differences between the four attachment types emerged on all the psychological measures. On all the psychological tests the scores were highest with regard to the Fearful type and lowest on the Secure type (all were significant according to Sheffé tests). For compliance, the Secure type differed significantly on Sheffé tests from the Fear-
*
Beta
t-value
Adjusted R2
0.06 0.06 0.15 0.40
0.76 0.90 1.93 6.98***
Block1 0.23*** F(4, 344) = 26.59
0.11 0.04 0.11 0.33 0.15 0.12
1.40 0.64 1.45 5.61*** 2.56* 2.11*
Block 2 0.26*** F(2, 342) = 7.30
p < 0.05. p < 0.001.
***
ful (p < 0.001) and Preoccupied (p < 0.001) types. The effect sizes in compliance between the Secure and Fearful and Preoccupied types were 1.03 (‘high’) and 0.62 (‘moderate’), respectively (Cohen, 1988). 4. Discussion The present findings support the hypothesis formulated in Section 1. Compliance is significantly related to maladaptive attachment as measured by the MMARA. Both the Anxiety and Avoidance attachment measures were associated with compliance. As far as the four Bartholomew’s types are concerned, the participants in the Secure attachment group, as predicted, were significantly less compliant than the Fearful and Preoccupied types. These are important findings. The main implication is that women, who are insecure in terms of their attachment, are more likely to be compliant in terms of their personality. This makes them potentially more vulnerable to comply with unreasonable requests or demands in ‘personal’ and ‘impersonal’ relationships. In terms of personal relationships their insecurity may result in them not being able to stand up to their partner (e.g., giving in to unreasonable requests), which could put a strain on their relationship (Gudjonsson et al., in press-b). The present findings suggest the relationship between attachment and compliance is partially mediated by self-esteem, although after controlling for self-esteem in a hierarchical analysis, anxious and avoidant attachments still predicted compliance. The finding that the Fearful type scored highest on all the psychological measures in the present study, suggests that they have the greatest number of psychological problems, including anxiety, depression and low self-esteem. This fits in well with the finding of Brennan et al. (1998) that the Fearful type scored highest of all four groups on a scale measuring negative postcoital emotions. This
Table 1 Mean scores, standard deviations, Cronbach Alpha, and correlations between the tests Psychological test
Mean (SD)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
2.9 (1.0) 2.3 (0.9) 9.8 (3.5) 16.6 (5.3) 3.3 (4.7) 3.0 (4.0) 7.1 (6.1)
–
0.46* –
0.37* 0.35* –
0.47* 0.44* 0.47* –
0.46* 0.49* 0.31* 0.55* –
0.39* 0.36* 0.28* 0.41* 0.64* –
0.44* 0.46* 0.35* 0.51* 0.74* 0.66* –
0.87
0.89
0.76
0.88
0.90
0.82
0.90
Romantic attachment anxiety Romantic attachment avoidance Compliance Self-esteem Depression Anxiety Stress
Cronbach alpha *
p < 0.001.
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G.H. Gudjonsson et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 45 (2008) 276–280 Table 3 Mean scores and standard deviations on the psychological tests in each of Bartholomew’s attachment types Psychological scale
Bartholomew’s attachment types Compliance Self-esteem Depression Anxiety Stress *
Secure
Fearful
Preoccupied
Dismissing
Mean (SD) (N)
Mean (SD) (N)
Mean (SD) (N)
Mean (SD) (N)
8.9 15.2 2.0 2.0 5.5
12.1 20.9 8.0 5.9 11.9
11.1 19.3 5.2 5.0 9.9
10.5 18.0 4.7 3.5 9.3
(3.1) (4.4) (2.8) (2.4) (5.0)
(241) (237) (236) (237) (233)
(3.1) (5.9) (8.1) (7.2) (8.5)
(36) (34) (34) (35) (35)
(4.0) (5.7) (5.4) (4.3) (6.2)
(56) (55) (54) (56) (53)
(3.6) (6.3) (5.4) (4.5) (5.6)
(25) (24) (24) (24) (24)
F- value
14.26* 21.06* 25.88* 18.66* 20.08*
p < 0.001 level.
type is also more likely to comply with unwanted sex (Impett & Peplau, 2002). Gudjonsson et al. (in press-b) argue in relation to their research into differences between ‘personal’ and ‘impersonal’ relationship compliance that the thought of wishing to decline the request of a loved one, and the associated fear of emotional rejection, generates a state of mindlessness, followed by increased compliance. Impett and Peplau’s (2002) findings support this hypothesis. They found that anxiously attached women were overly sensitive to rejection and consented to unwanted sex as a way of avoiding conflict and confrontation with a partner, which supports the previous findings of Downey, Freitas, Michaelis, and Khouri (1998). In the present study, the Fearful and Preoccupied types were most compliant, which suggests that it is the combination of fear of rejection/abandonment, and insecurities in romantic relationships, which is linked to susceptibility to compliance. Of course, the present findings are limited to romantic attachment, but there is likely to be an overlap with insecure attachment in other relationships (Waters et al., 2000). Indeed, Pickering et al. (2008), using the Bartholomew and Horowitz (1991) relationship questionnaire (RQ), which also measures attachment both categorically and dimensionally, found that paranoid beliefs were significantly elevated among the Fearful and Preoccupied types in a similar way as found for compliance in the present study. The key mediating variable for both attachment anxiety and avoidance was negative self-esteem. Wearden, Peters, Berry, Barrowclough, and Liversidge (2008), using the Psychosis Attachment Measure (PAM) for measuring global attachment (romantic attachment was deliberately excluded), found that after controlling for the confounding effect of negative affect, negative self-evaluative core beliefs were significantly correlated with anxious attachment but not with avoidant attachment. In the present study, attachment anxiety and avoidance were moderately correlated (r = .46, p < 0.001), which is in contrast to previous studies using the MMARA (r = .11; Brennan et al., 1998), the RQ (r = .11; Pickering et al., 2008), and the PAM (r = .08; Wearden et al., 2008). One possible explanation for the moderately high correlation between anxiety and avoidance attachment styles in the present study relates to the sample studied (i.e. pregnant women). It is possible that their pregnancy affected the attachment scores. It is noteworthy that the proportion of women who fell into the Secure category (67%) in the present study is high in comparison to previous studies (e.g. Brennan et al., 1998; Pickering et al., 2008). Bartholomew’s four types of attachment can be construed as a quadrant framework similar to that described within Eysenck’s theory of personality (Brand, 1997; Eysenck & Eysenck, 1975). Using Eysenck’s quadrant framework, Gudjonsson et al. (2004) found that unstable (anxious) introverts were most compliant in their temperaments and stable extraverts the least compliant. In the present study, the Fearful quadrant is made of a combination of high Anxiety and high Avoidance from the MMARA, whereas the reverse was for the Secure type (i.e. low Anxiety and low
Avoidance). It would be interesting in future research to investigate how Eysenck’s quadrant framework overlaps with that of Bartholomew’s four types. The present findings suggest that there may be considerable overlap between the two quadrant frameworks; adult romantic attachment may be closely linked to personality where stable extraverts fit into the Secure type and unstable-introverts into the Fearful type. The present study has a number of limitations, including the sample (i.e. pregnant women), the self-report nature of the findings, and the fact that adult attachment is measured in the context of romantic (specific domain) rather than as a general attachment predisposition. In spite of these limitations, the present findings provide important new results, which are consistent with the recent work of Pickering et al. (2008) into insecure attachment and paranoia and employing a more global measure of attachment among male and female university students. Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the research assistants, Þorbjörg Sveinsdóttir, Pétur Ingi Pétursson and María Hrönn Nikulásdóttir, for organizing the data collection and computing the data, midwives in the Primary Health Care of the Capital Area for their co-operation and assistance with collection of the data, and the pregnant women for their participation. The authors are grateful to the Icelandic Centre for Research (Grant No. 050427021), the Landspitali Science Fund, the Wyeth Research Fund, and the University of Iceland Research Fund, for financial support. References Bartholomew, K. (1990). Avoidance of intimacy: An attachment perspective. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 7, 147–178. Bartholomew, K., & Horowitz, L. M. (1991). Attachment styles among young adults: A test of a four-category model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 226–244. Bond, R., & Smith, P. B. (1996). Culture and conformity: A meta-analysis of studies using Asch’s (1952b, 1956) line judgment task. Psychological Bulletin, 119, 111–137. Brand, C. R. (1997). Hans Eysenck’s personality dimensions: Their number and nature. In H. Nyborg (Ed.), The scientific study of human nature (pp. 17–35). Oxford: Elsevier. Brennan, K. A., Clark, C. L., & Shaver, P. R. (1998). Self-report measurement of adult attachment. In J. A. Simpson & W. S. Rholes (Eds.), Attachment theory and close relationships (pp. 46–76). New York: Guildford Press. Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioural sciences. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Erlbaum. Crawford, J. R., & Henry, J. D. (2003). The Depression anxiety stress scales (DASS): Normative data and latent structure in a large non-clinical sample. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 42, 111–131. Downey, G., Freitas, A. L., Michaelis, B., & Khouri, H. (1998). The self-fulfilling prophecy in close relationships: Rejection sensitivity and rejection by romantic partners. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 545–560. Eysenck, H. J., & Eysenck, S. B. G. (1975). Manual of the Eysenck personality questionnaire. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Gudjonsson, G. H. (1989). Compliance in an interrogation situation: A new scale. Personality and Individual Differences, 10, 535–540. Gudjonsson, G. H. (1997). The Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scales Manual. Hove: Psychology Press.
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