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"Why are human beings so eager to form social bonds, and why do they suffer so grievously when those bonds are disrupted or broken? How does a person overcome fear of rejection and distrust to become emotionally invested in and attached to others? How do we become identified with other members of a social group to the extent that we include them in our self-concept and rely on them to supply our sense of value? Why do they contribute so powerfully to our sense of meaning and our feelings of vitality, on the one hand, and--at times--to our anguish and despair, on the other? What neural and hormonal processes are involved in the formation and maintenance of social bonds? How do our social experiences in infancy and childhood influence our relational behavior and the quality of our social bonds in adulthood? How are our social connections influenced by biological and evolutionary processes and sociocultural contexts? These important questions about human connections have attracted the attention of researchers from diverse disciplines, such as social psychology, developmental psychology, communication studies, sociology, and neuroscience. But there is too little dialogue between the different disciplines, and this has resulted in a lack of integration of insights and findings. In the first four volumes of our Herzliya Series on Personality and Social Psychology, we focused on prosocial motives, emotions, and behavior; aggression, violence, and their effects; morality ("good and evil"); and existential concerns such as mortality, meaning, and freedom. In this, the fifth volume, we deepen our analysis of human social behavior by surveying some of the latest developments in theory and research concerning the physiological and psychological mechanisms underlying the formation of social connections at neural, dyadic, and group levels. We do this with the entire human life span in mind, beginning with infant-parent relationships. This new volume contains 21 chapters organized into four main sections: the brain level (focusing on the neural underpinnings of social connections and the hormonal processes that contribute to forming connections); the developmental level (focusing especially on child-parent relationships); the dyadic relationship level (focusing especially on romantic and marital relationships); and the group level (considering both evolutionary and physiological bases of group processes). Each section describes state-of-the-art theories and research from the disciplines of social psychology, developmental psychology, and social neuroscience. The chapter authors, all experts in their fields, generously agreed to come to Herzliya and deliver lectures at the 2012 Herzliya Symposium on Personality and Social Psychology. They participated in hours of formal lectures and discussions, spent many informal hours together, and then returned home and prepared chapters based on the lectures and discussions. The meeting was cohosted by the two editors of this volume. We worked with the chapter authors to make the resulting book as accessible, coherent, and readable as possible so it would be suitable for researchers and application oriented professionals as well as for university classes and the educated public. The book provides a lively, engaging, readable, and up-to-the-moment review of social psychological, developmental, and neuroscientific approaches to understanding the formation and quality of social connections across the life span"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).

In the present article we provide an overview of attachment theory as it has been adapted and tested in our research program. We then review attachment research by many investigators on a variety of topics likely to be of interest to family researchers: patterns of communication, management of conflict, provision of care and support to relationship partners and family members, family dynamics, and the emergence of attachment patterns within families

AbstractLittle research has examined the relation between the attachment behavioral system and the sexual behavioral system, although these two systems, along with the caregiving system, are theorized to constitute romantic love (Fraley & Shaver, 2000; Hazan & Shaver, 1987). College students (N = 400) completed measures of two dimensions of attachment style, anxiety and avoidance, and motives for having sex. Anxiety was predicted to be associated with having sex to reduce insecurity and foster intense intimacy. Avoidance was predicted to correlate inversely with having sex to foster intimacy and positively with nonromantic goals, such as increasing one's status and prestige among peers. The results supported both sets of predictions. People high on the attachment anxiety dimension reported having sex to reduce insecurity and establish intense closeness; people high on the attachment avoidance dimension reported having sex to impress their peer group, especially if they were having casual, uncommitted sex. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Researchers who study romantic relationships have mentioned respect as a factor contributing to relationship success, but little effort has been made to define respect, measure it, or discover how it relates to other relationship constructs. In Study 1 a prototype methodology was used to identify consensual features of respect. Participants in Study 2 rated the centrality of the features of respect and completed a new prototype‐based respect‐for‐partner scale that was highly reliable and correlated in predictable ways with avoidant attachment and evaluative aspects of partner descriptions. In Study 3, the new respect scale predicted relationship satisfaction better than scales measuring liking, loving, attachment‐related anxiety and avoidance, and positive and negative partner qualities. Suggestions are offered for future research on respect.

Attachment insecurities (anxiety and avoidance) are often associated with relationship dissatisfaction, but the mediators have been unclear. We examined the mediating role of perceived conflict in 274 French‐Canadian couples who completed measures of attachment insecurities, perception of conflict, and relationship satisfaction. Partners' own attachment anxiety and avoidance predicted their experience of conflict. In addition, women's anxiety predicted men's experience of conflict, and men's avoidance predicted women's experience of conflict. The associations between attachment insecurities and relationship dissatisfaction were partially mediated by conflict.

AbstractThis study examined how long‐term single people satisfy their attachment and sexual needs. A community sample of single and coupled adults (N = 142) located in the United States completed measures of attachment style, attachment figures, loneliness, depression, anxiety, quality of relationships with parents, and sexual behavior. In a structured interview, they answered questions about their childhoods and managing attachment, support, and sexual needs. Quality of childhood relationships with parents as well as use of attachment‐related words was coded. Single participants were as likely as coupled ones to exhibit attachment security and rely on attachment figures, although compared to coupled participants, they reported higher levels of loneliness, depression, anxiety, sexual dissatisfaction, and troubled childhood relationships with parents.