Are attachment styles more than a social media trend?

Attachment styles have taken off as a way to understand relationships. But does the science behind it line up with popular interpretations?

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:17Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Flora and you're listening to Science Friday. In the past few years, this idea of attachment styles has really taken off, both online and in therapy sessions. It's gone from this kind of niche psychological concept to a memified shorthand that describes how we act in relationships. And if you've never heard of attachment styles, here is the short crash course. There's anxious attachment, which can mean seeking constant reassurance. Avoidant attachment, fleeing when someone tries to get close. Fearful avoidant attachment, also called disorganized. And that's some combination of the two you just heard.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  And then there's secure attachment, which is what it sounds like. But just how much science backs up this framework? And what are attachment influencers getting wrong? Columbia University psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr. Amir Levine has written two books about attachment styles. His first in 2010, Attached and Secure, which came out earlier this year. Amir, welcome to Science Friday.

• 1:26Speaker 02

  Hey, it's great to be here.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  It's great to have you. Can you give me an example of how each attachment style might manifest in a relationship? So people can kind of reflect on themselves in their own relationships and understand where they might fall in the quadrant?

• 1:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, I'm glad you're asking that because it's like this whole idea of attachment styles. It really is everywhere. And I can give you like an example. Let's say you're getting back from vacation and there's like a message waiting for you from your, from your partner. Call me, we need to talk. So what goes through your head? What are you thinking? I'm thinking, oh, my God, no, this is going to be, this is the end. They're calling me, they want to break up. Do you think, oh, my God, they're so needy. I just got back and they already want some attention. And then you don't bother calling? Or you're like, oh, my God, I think they want to break up with me, but I don't have time for this. I can't deal with them. So you just like completely ignore it?

• 2:26Speaker 02

  Or you think, oh, wow, they're probably planning something really fun for us. And adding, they're like the surprise party.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  That's secure.

• 2:34Speaker 02

  To celebrate the promotion. Yes. So the way that you respond is really pretty much based on your attachment styles, which are also called working models.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  So in that example you just gave, if your response was, oh, they're going to break up with me. Does that, is that an anxious, a classically anxious attachment response?

• 2:54Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly. Like the whole idea about anxious is that they're very sensitive to potential danger in relationship. But it's not just danger, and we can get into that more. They have some superpowers. And remind me to tell you about that because it's very important. But for now, let's just like, yes, they will respond to potential danger much more. They have a very sensitive radar for that. They're like, oh, no, something may go wrong. Something may go wrong. So that's anxious. They really are afraid of being rejected. They're afraid of being, not being loved as much as they love. There's a lot of worry, like they worry a lot about the intactness of their relationship. They also think their relationships are very fragile.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  Right, okay. And then if you were the person who's like, stop smothering me. I just got back. That's avoidant.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  Yes, so avoidance, they, they need a measure of distance in a relationship. They, they want to be in a relationship because I think the vast majority of us are wired to be in relationships. But that's what they often time, they don't understand. All of a sudden, they find themselves in a relationship and they feel, oh, my God, this is suffocating. And also they have this stance where like, everybody should take care of their own problems and should be self-sufficient. You should just look after your own self. If you become dependent on someone else, then that's, you've made a mistake. So that's like a, like a classic avoidant stance.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  Okay, okay. And then the disorganized is this sort of combination of the two, where you're like, both like, you're smothering me, but also you're going to break up with me and I don't know what to do.

• 4:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, so on one hand is like, come closer. And then other hand is like, stay away, stay away. So it's very confusing and can be very, very difficult and challenging in relationships. So they have a yearning, unlike their regular avoidance. Like, I don't need anyone, I could be on my own. The anxious avoidant or fearful avoidant is like, no, I want people. It's like when they get close, it's like, wow, this is overwhelming. Stay away, but I want you, but stay away.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  We've all had an ex like that. Okay, so I think that the question that keeps going through my mind is how much scientific research is there to back up this idea of these attachment styles? Like, has this been studied or is this just a meme?

• 5:06Speaker 02

  Oh, like so much. That's the beauty of it. And that's actually when I came across these attachment styles, and I came across it by chance. I've never heard of it in the clinical world. I've heard of it in kids and actually came across it when I was doing my child psychiatry residency. But I've never heard about adult attachment style. And it just so happened that the time that I was doing my residency, I went through a breakup and it just didn't make sense to me. And I was working in a therapeutic nursery with moms with PTSD and their kids. And we were doing secure therapy in that context, in children. And it was so interesting that I did something you never do. I read the whole suggested reading list.

• 5:48Speaker 02

  And that's where I came across the science of adult attachment styles. And I was like, whoa, this, it felt like a light bulb went on in my head. This is so important. And it tells you so much about relationships. How come we don't use it in the clinic or even talk about it? And that's where me and my best friend from high school, Rachel, decided to kind of like, we really needed to excavate like all this information that was buried in scientific literature. But before it became a, a social media phenomenon, these attachment styles, it was buried in scientific literature for decades. There's like tons of research about how exactly anxious behave, how avoidant behave. There's so much understanding about these different working models,

• 6:33Speaker 02

  like really way of looking at the world to really help people understand where they're coming from and where other people are coming from.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  How strongly are your attachment styles in adulthood related to your relationships in childhood? Do we know? Is there argument about that?

• 6:49Speaker 02

  Oh, yes, yes, there is really good research about it. There's one study that came out this year, 2026. Actually prospective research, the kind that, the one that you really want, that we actually followed people for 30 years, then looked at to see what you were, their attachment style in childhood, and then their attachment style in adulthood. And people have this idea, and especially on social media, oh, the attachment style that you had as a child, because your parents treated you in a certain way, that's how you're going to show up in your adult relationships. But that's not what the findings show. And the findings actually show that the childhood attachment really contributes very little to your adult attachment. And in one, I think one of the findings showed

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  that maternal behavior contributed only like 3% to the variance in your adult attachment. And actually, they found that early childhood friendships contributed like 11% to the variance. So both are not a lot. Still, there's like almost like a 10% or I don't know, 97%, which actually because of other factors. But I actually find it very promising because the fact that your attachment styles are very malleable, for me as a therapist, that's very promising. And that's why in secure, I came up with this whole new, that it's actually, I think, something that I've been working on for the past 15 years, since I wrote Attached, something that's called secure priming therapy,

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  which is a way to prime people into greater security. Because we have that malleability, that ability to change.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  I want to get into that exact thing, but I have to take a break. Stay with us.

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• 9:52Speaker 01

  So you have this survey about attachment on your website, and I noticed you have tons of different categories that you ask about. Like, there's romantic, familial, relationship with God, AI.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I just added that.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  What are you learning? And like, what relationships are most secure for most people?

• 10:15Speaker 02

  Right, so I'm so glad you asked me that. So you remember the scenario that I gave you in the beginning, where I said, you're coming back from vacation and you have like a message waiting for your partner? But now, in more recent years, people have expanded the study of attachment and the science have shown that we also have other relationships that also can really predict, again, according to the attachment style, how we'll react. So just think about it, if you're coming back from vacation and you have a message waiting for you from your boss, like telling you, "Call me, we need to talk." What goes through your mind? "Oh, my God, I'm gonna get fired." Or like, "Wow, I'm gonna get promoted." Like, so, like, what goes through your mind?

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Do some people get that message and think, "Wow, I'm gonna get promoted"?

• 11:02Speaker 02

  I mean, I don't know, in today's world, with everything that's going on. It's also, in fact, that's a very, very important point that you're just making. It's not completely out of context. It really is a very sophisticated social computing ability that we're putting all the information together and then there's an output that comes out. And that's what I wanted to see in my survey. And really, I wanted to give people an opportunity to find out their attachment, what I call attachment topography or attachment map. Because we can have more than one attachment style. And with different people, we can have different attachment styles. And we can also have a general attachment style. And that's what I actually do with patients in my practice.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  I have them fill out with as many relationships as they want to, and we get a map of their attachment topography. And that actually, we use that as a basis for the beginning of treatment. I've had more than 120,000 relationships mapped on that survey. And what I found was very, very interesting. Even people who are fearful, avoidant, like, a great number of them, around 62%, reported at least one secure relationship in their life. So it seems like that many of us have these, what I've come to call, secure islands. That even if we don't believe in people, we're very wary of people, we don't trust people,

• 12:28Speaker 02

  that we have at least one person that we feel that we can be very, very close to and like, very securely attached to. And I find it extremely promising and helpful. And I use that in therapy. I use those people, those secure islands, to help you expand your secure potential, basically.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  But are those secure islands always people? Or is it really AI or your pet?

• 12:52Speaker 02

  So I'm glad that you asked, because really, the pet is like the first that comes in line.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  That's the most secure place. That's the secure island for everybody.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  I mean, but you'd be surprised. 70% of people who rated pets rated like a secure relationship with a pet. So there's 30% who don't have a secure relationship with their pets. And I love human behavior, because there's like the vastness of human behavior and how different we are from each other and how complex and intricate and how we experience things very differently, which I personally find fascinating. And that's why I love being a therapist. But then, people are the least secure with their parents, apparently. Yes, and with their fathers, they're the least. And like, right after pets comes friends, actually. So friendships are really important.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  And we use that in therapy to find those secure, the secure people in your life. And what I find also in therapy is oftentimes, the people who are secure in our lives don't get enough attention from us, especially if we're insecure. Somehow, our brain tends to gravitate towards the things that our attachment styles is programmed to see. That's like, "Oh, this person hasn't texted me back." Or, "This person is being way too much." And we kind of like dismiss the secure people in our lives. And part of secure priming therapy is to teach people how to really integrate and give more priority to the secures in their lives.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  That's so fascinating. I feel like they just tell us so much about the human condition.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  And I feel...

• 14:35Speaker 01

  It's deep, you know?

• 14:36Speaker 02

  Yes, I know. And what I really am very like grateful for is how malleable and adaptive our social brain is.

• 14:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  That we have at any given chance the ability to rework those attachment styles.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. I want to come back to something you mentioned right at the top. You said that there are superpowers to some of these attachment styles, or a flip side. Walk us through that.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Oh, yes. So I'll tell you about one study that I think is just so brilliant. They had a group of people in a room, and they had like a few computers there. And then they had a little bit of smoke come out of one of their computers. And they found that the people who were anxious were the first to identify the potential danger and alert everyone else. And they also found that it was the avoidants who were first out the door. And I think it really, I love the way how it really exemplifies, like, that as a species, there's an advantage to having a segment of the population have like this really sensitivity to cues around them,

• 15:48Speaker 02

  both social cues and environmental cues, and be like the canary in the coal mine that'll be able to identify potential danger. But also, on the flip side, to have the avoidance, because I think I would probably be more like, "Oh, my God, do you smell that? What should we do? Should we go? Should we stay?" But the avoidants were like, "I'm out of here. I'm not consulting with anyone. I'm my own person and I'm doing what I want, what I gotta do for myself." And then people followed. So you see the advantage of having these two phenotypes in situations, in situations like that.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  All right, leave us with some advice.

• 16:23Speaker 02

  So I think, people think, "Oh, being secure really requires you so much. It requires so much out of you." But it's not about that. It's really about showing up in a way that when you're consistent, available and responsive. And not like in big, long conversation, but it's really the microinteractions that matter the most.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  You have a term for this, right? Seemingly insignificant minor interactions.

• 16:48Speaker 02

  Yes, there's that, "seemies." These are the seemingly insignificant minor interactions. And it's those little things that really matter, because we all notice when someone emails us back right away. And we all sort of have a sense of like, "Oh, yeah, that's nice. I just reached out and they're mirroring right back." Our social brains find it really gratifying. And I think, you know, when people go to therapy, they think, "I'm gonna need to unpack all these like childhood things that have happened to me, all these difficult relationships or like big events that have happened." And they hardly ever think about the seemingly insignificant minor interactions. But if you understand the social brain, and in general, how the brain works from a neuroscience perspective, these "seemies" are so important,

• 17:31Speaker 02

  because each and every one gives you a chance to create something new that's counterintuitive to your anxious belief system or your avoidant belief system. It's like, "Oh, wow, actually, look at that. Like, relationships are not so fragile. They're actually showing up for me." Or like, "Whoa, they're not trying to pigeon my space." So little interactions, and if you learn the certain pitfalls, and have like a chapter for each attachment style to kind of like teach them where their pitfalls are. Like, oftentimes, they repeat the same sort of like scenarios again and again, and how to circumvent that to become more secure.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  It's such a hopeful message, that it's in the small stuff. Amir, I feel like I've learned so much. Thank you for joining us today.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  Thank you, it was great being here.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  Dr. Amir Levine is a neuroscientist and Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University. He's also the author of two books about attachment theory, Attached and Secure. If you want to take Amir's survey and learn a little something about yourself, head to sciencefriday.com/attachment.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  This episode was produced by Shoshana Buxbaum. And if this conversation made you think differently about your own attachment style or you have new questions for us, call us, 877-4-SY-FRY, 877-4-SY-FRY. I'm Flora Liximan, we'll catch you next time.