Bases of Adult Attachment

Vivian Zayas is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the Personality, Attachment, and Control Laboratory at Cornell University. Her research examines the cognitive and affective processes that regulate behaviors within close relationships. She approaches the study of the individual and his or her relationships from a multi-level, interdisciplinary perspective that bridges the study of attachment processes with research on executive control and self-regulation and blurs traditionally defined boundaries between social and personality psychology and cognitive and cognitive neuroscience. Her research appears in journals such as Psychological Science, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Child Development, Nature Neuroscience, and Journal of Personality. She has received funding from National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health. Cindy Hazan received her Ph.D. from Denver University. Her current research focuses on the normative aspects of adult attachment formation and maintenance, with special emphasis on identifying markers of attachment at multiple levels of functioning. She is an associate professor in the Department of Human Development at Cornell University.

Part I: Introduction: Introduction and overview.- Part II: The processes that promote adult attachment formation: The distress-relief dynamic in attachment bonding.- An expectancy-value approach to attachment.- Part III: The effect of previous experience on adult attachment formation and maintenance.- Attachment and relationships across time: An organizational-developmental perspective.- The biobehavioral legacy of early attachment relationships for adult emotional and interpersonal functioning.- How early experiences shape attraction, partner preferences and attachment dynamics.- Part IV: Development and change in adult attachment bonds: Insights into the formation of attachment bonds from a social network perspective.- From an unknown other to an attachment figure: How do mental representations change as attachments form?.- Evidence from fMRI studies of adult pair-bonding.