Are attachment styles more than a social media trend?

Defining the four attachment styles

0:00Hey, 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 meme-ified 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,

0:34avoidant 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, 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

1:10Science Friday. Hey, it's great to be here. 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? 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

1:43for you from your partner. Call me, we need to talk. So what goes through your head? What are you thinking? Are you 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. Or you think, oh wow, they're probably planning something really fun for us

2:15in outing. And they're like the surprise party. That's secure, I take it. Yes. So the way that you respond is really pretty much based on your attachment styles, which are also called working models. So in that example you just gave, if your response was, oh, they're going to break up with me. Is that an anxious, a classically anxious attachment response? Yes, exactly. Like the whole idea about anxious is that they're very sensitive to potential danger

2:46in 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. And like, oh no, something may go wrong. Something may go wrong. So that's the 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 that relationships are very fragile. Right. Okay. And then if you were the person who's like,

3:20stop smothering me. I just got back. That's avoidant. Yes. So avoidance, they need a measure of distance in a relationship. 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 oftentimes 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 I should be self-sufficient. You should just look after your own self. If you become dependent on someone else,

3:53then that's, you've made a mistake. So that's like a classic avoidant stance. 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. Yeah. So on one hand is like, come closer. And another 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 avoidance, like, no, I want people. But it's like,

4:28when they get close, it's like, well, this is overwhelming. Stay away. But I want you,

The scientific evidence for adult attachment

4:32but stay away. 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? 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

5:07residency, 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. And that's where I came across the science of adult attachment styles. And I was like, whoa, this, I felt like a light bulb went on in my head. This is

5:41so 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 all this information that was buried in scientific literature. But before it became a social media phenomenon, these attachment styles, it was buried in scientific literature for decades. There was tons of research about how exactly anxious

6:12behave, how avoidant behave. There's so much understanding about these different working models, 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. How strongly are your attachment styles in adulthood related to your relationships in childhood? Do we know? Is there argument about that? Oh, yes, yes. There is really good research about it. There's one study that came out this year, in 2026, actually prospective research, the one that you really want, that actually followed people

6:47for 30 years, then looked 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 showed. And the findings actually showed that the childhood attachment really contributes very little to your adult attachment. And in one, I think one of the findings showed that maternal

7:20behavior 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 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

7:55actually, I think, something that I've been working on for the past 15 years since I wrote Attach, something that's called Secure Priming Therapy, which is a way to prime people into greater security, because we have that malleability, that ability to change. I want to get into that exact thing, but I have to take a break. Stay with us.

Mapping attachment topography and secure islands

8:14So 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. Yeah, yeah. I just added that. What are you learning? And like, what relationships are most

8:47secure for most people? 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.

9:18If 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 going to get fired. Or like, wow, I'm going to get promoted. So like, what goes through your mind? Do some people get that message and think, wow, I'm going to get promoted? 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

9:48context. 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. I have

10:21them 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 lives. So it seems like that many of us have these,

10:55what 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, that we have at least one person that we feel that we can be very, very close to and 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. But are those secure islands always people? Or is it really AI or your pet?

11:26So I'm glad that you asked, because really, the pet is like the first that comes in line. That's the most secure place. That's a secure island for everybody. I mean, but you'd be surprised, 70% of people who rated pets rated like a secure relationship with the pets. 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

11:58differently, 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 come friends, actually. So friendships are really important. And we use that in therapy to find those 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

12:34attention 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. That's so fascinating. I feel like they just tell us so

13:05much about the human condition. And I feel, you know, yes, I know. And what I really am very like grateful for is how malleable and adaptive our social brain is. Yes. That we have at any given chance the ability to rework those attachment styles. Yeah. I want to come back to something you

Micro interactions and building security

13:32mentioned right at the top. You said that there are superpowers to some of these attachment styles or a flip side. Walk us through that. Oh, yeah. 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 the computers. And they found that the people who were anxious were the first to identify the potential danger and alert everyone else.

14:03And 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 these really sensitivities, two cues around them, 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

14:36we do? Should we go? Should we stay? But the avoidance 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 got to do for myself. And then people followed. So you see the advantage of having these two phenotypes in situations, in situations like that. All right, leave us with some advice. 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 the way that when you're consistent, available and responsive, and not like in big,

15:13long conversation. But it's really the micro interactions that matter the most. You have a term for this, right? Seemingly insignificant minor interactions. 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 I'm hearing right back. Our social brains find it really gratifying. And I think, you know,

15:43when people go to therapy, they think I'm going to 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 because each and every one gives you a chance to create something new that's counterintuitive to your anxious belief system or your avoidant

16:14belief 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, well, they're not trying to impede on 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. It's such a hopeful message that it's in the small stuff. Amir, I feel like I've learned so much.

16:48Thank you for joining us today. Thank you. It was great being here. 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 slash attachment.

17:16This 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-SI-FRI, 877-4-SI-FRI. I'm Flora Lixem and we'll catch you next time.