Sexuality and personality of adolescents within the framework of attachment
LE3 .A278 2008
2008
Symons, Doug
Acadia University
Bachelor of Science
Honours
Psychology
In late adolescence, significant relationships revolve around romantic and sexual relationships at a time when personality is being consolidated. In the current study, 190 18- and 19-year-old undergraduates (135 females) completed self-report questionnaires that included the Sexual Attachment Measure (SAM; Szielasko, Symons, & Price, 2007), which has secure, anxious-ambivalent, and avoidant subscales. In addition, participants completed self-reports of romantic attachment, the Personality Research Form – E, and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. Results showed secure sexual attachment style was negatively related to anxious sexual and romantic attachment styles, and there were expected interrelations of personality subscales. In addition, there were expected correlations between attachment styles and personality constructs in which ambivalent sexual style was positively related to aggression, defendence, and autonomy in both partial and bivariate correlations. Ambivalence and avoidance in both sexual and romantic attachment were all negatively related to succorance and positively related to autonomy in both bivariate and partial correlations. Finally, avoidant sexual attachment was positively related to impulsivity and negatively related to harm avoidance in both partial and bivariate correlations. In sum, attachment styles are related to predictable aspects of personality.
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https://scholar.acadiau.ca/islandora/object/theses:528