Chinese college students' general and relationship-specific representations of adult attachment: Variable-centred and person-centred analysis

摘要

Formerly, researchers often treated adult attachment as a trait-like construct with consistency across relationship contexts. However, recent studies have shown that people possess multiple relationship-specific attachment representations, and inter-correlations among them are only in a small-to-medium range. The aim of this study is to test whether these variable-centred results could be replicated in China and further supplement them with a person-centred analysis focusing on identifying prototypical patterns of multiple working models across relationships. We administrated measurements of general and four relationship-specific (mother/father/best friend/romantic partner) working models and indicators of psychological adjustment upon 302 Chinese college students. Results from variable-centred analysis demonstrated the cross-relationship variability in working models. Furthermore, global indicators of psychological adjustment were better predicted by general models, while relationship-specific indicators were better predicted by corresponding relationship-specific models. These results largely replicate previous Western studies, supporting the existence of multiple attachment representations in China. In person-centred analysis, a latent profile analysis identified four typical classes of working model profiles: all-average, all-secure, romantic-insecure and peer-secure. These classes differed not only in the cross-relationship variability of their working models, but also in their levels of psychological adjustment. These interesting patterns may have theoretical implications and are worthy of further examination.