Attachment Predictors of Different Types of Aggression

Winona, Minnesota

Research has shown a relationship between parental and peer attachment and aggressive behavior (Gallarin & Alonso-Arbiol, 2012; Malonda, Llorca, Mesurado, Samper, & Mestre, 2019). Gomez and Mestre (2007) found that insecure mother and father attachment was positively associated with aggression. Maldona et al. (2019) found that secure parental attachments were negatively correlated with verbal and physical aggression. This study also showed that peer attachment influenced prosocial behavior, which helped decrease aggressive behavior. Given these findings, parental attachment may be a more robust indicator of aggression than peer attachment. Li et al. (2015) also found that secure parental attachment was negatively associated with indirect aggression. Some studies have found that insecure maternal attachment had a stronger relationship with aggression than insecure paternal attachment (Earl & Burns, 2009; Maldona et al., 2019). The present study seeks to further examine the differential effects of parental and peer attachment on different types of aggression (physical, verbal, indirect, anger, and hostility). Given the results of prior studies, our hypotheses are: 1) insecure parental and peer attachments will predict higher levels of general aggression, 2) parental attachments will be stronger predictors of aggression than peer attachment, and 3) insecure mother attachment will be a stronger predictor of aggression than insecure father attachment. Given that it is unclear how predictive the attachment variables will be with different types of aggression, we sought to examine these relationships in an exploratory manner in a young adult sample.