Are attachment styles more than a social media trend?

[MUSIC PLAYING] FLORA LICHTMAN: Hey, 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 memeified 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, avoidant 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 Science Friday. Hey,

AMIR LEVINE: It’s great to be here.

FLORA LICHTMAN: 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?

AMIR LEVINE: Yeah, I’m glad you’re asking that because this whole idea of attachment styles, it really is everywhere. And I can give you an example. Let’s say you get back from vacation and there’s a message waiting for 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 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 an outing, and there, like, the surprise party–

FLORA LICHTMAN: That’s secure–

AMIR LEVINE: –to celebrate their promotion.

FLORA LICHTMAN: –I take it.

AMIR LEVINE: Yes. So the way that you respond is really pretty much based on your attachment styles, which are also called working models.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So in that example you just gave, if your response was, oh, they’re going to break up with me, is that a classically anxious attachment response?

AMIR LEVINE: Yes, exactly. The whole idea about anxious is that they’re very sensitive to potential danger in 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 say, yes, they will respond to potential danger much more.

They have a very sensitive radar for that. They’re 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 not being loved as much as they love. There’s a lot of worry. They worry a lot about the intactness of their relationship. They also think their relationship is very fragile.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Right, OK. And then if you were the person who’s like, stop smothering me, I just got back, that’s avoidant.

AMIR LEVINE: Yes. So avoidants, 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 they oftentimes 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 everybody should take care of their own problems and should be self-sufficient. You should just look after your own self. If you become dependent on someone else, then you’ve made a mistake. So that’s like a classic avoidant stance.

FLORA LICHTMAN: OK. And then the disorganized is the combination of the two, where you’re both like you’re smothering me, but also you’re going to break up with me, and I don’t what to do.

AMIR LEVINE: Yeah, so on one hand, it’s like come closer, and then the other hand, it’s 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 the regular avoidant, who’s like, I don’t need anyone, I can be on my own. The anxious avoidant or fearful avoidant, it’s like, no, I want people, but it’s like when they get close, it’s like, wow, this is overwhelming, stay away. But I want you, but stay away.

FLORA LICHTMAN: We’ve all had an ex like that. OK, so I think the question that keeps going through my mind is, how much scientific research is there to back up this idea of these attachment styles? Has this been studied, or is this just a meme?

AMIR LEVINE: 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’d never heard of it in the clinical world. I’d heard of it in kids, and I actually came across it when I was doing my child psychiatry residency, but I’d never heard about adult attachment style. And it just so happened, at 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– it felt like a light bulb went on in my head.

This is so 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 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, with tons of research about how exactly anxious behave, 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.

FLORA LICHTMAN: How strongly are your attachment styles in adulthood related to your relationships in childhood? Do we know? Is there argument about that?

AMIR LEVINE: Oh, yes. Yes, there is really good research about it. There’s one study that came out this year, 2026, actually prospective research, the kind that the one that you really want, that they actually followed people for 30 years, then looked at to see what were their attachment styles 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 show. And the findings actually show that the childhood attachment really contributes very little to your adult attachment. And I think one of the findings showed that maternal behavior 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 almost like a 10%, or even, I don’t know, 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– it’s actually, I think, something that I’ve been working on for the past 15 years, since I wrote Attached, 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.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I want to get into that exact thing, but I have to take a break. Stay with us.

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So you have this survey about attachment on your website. And I noticed you have tons of different categories that you ask about. There’s romantic, familial, relationship with God, AI.

AMIR LEVINE: Yeah, yeah, I just added that.

FLORA LICHTMAN: What are you learning? And like, what relationships are most secure for most people?

AMIR LEVINE: 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 a message waiting from 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 will react.

So just think about it, if you’re coming back from vacation and you have a message waiting for you from your boss, 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 what goes through your mind?

FLORA LICHTMAN: Do some people get that message and think, wow, I’m going to get promoted?

AMIR LEVINE: I mean, I don’t know, in today’s world, with everything that’s going on. Also, in fact, that’s a very, very important point that you’re just making. It’s not completely out of context. 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.

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 them fill out with as many relationships as they want to, and we get a map of their attachment topography. And 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’ve 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 life. So it seems like that many of us have these what 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 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.

FLORA LICHTMAN: But are those secure islands always people, or is it really AI or your pet?

AMIR LEVINE: So I’m glad that you asked, because really, the pet is like the first that comes in line.

FLORA LICHTMAN: That’s the most secure place. That’s the secure island for everybody.

AMIR LEVINE: I mean, but you’d be surprised, 70% of people who rated pets rated like a secure relationship with a pet. So there’s 30% who don’t have a secure relationship with their pets. And I love human behavior because there’s the vastness of human behavior and how different we are from each other, and how complex and intricate, and how we experience things very differently, 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.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Hm.

AMIR LEVINE: Yes. And with their fathers, they’re the least. And right after pets comes 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 attention from us, especially if we’re insecure.

Somehow, our brain tends to gravitate towards the things that our attachment styles is programmed to see. It’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.

FLORA LICHTMAN: That’s so fascinating. I feel like they just tell us so much about the human condition.

AMIR LEVINE: And I feel–

FLORA LICHTMAN: It’s deep, you know?

AMIR LEVINE: Yes, I know. And what I really am very grateful for is how malleable and adaptive our social brain is, that we have, at any given chance, the ability to rework those attachment styles.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Yeah. I want to come back to something you mentioned right at the top. You said that there are superpowers to some of these attachment styles, or a flip side. Walk us through that.

AMIR LEVINE: 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 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. And 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 that, as a species, there’s an advantage to having a segment of the population have this really sensitivity to 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 avoidants, because I think I would probably be more like, oh my God, do you smell that? What should we do? Should we go? Should we stay?

But the avoidants 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, and what I’ve got to do for myself. And then people followed. So you see the advantage of having these two phenotypes in situations like that.

FLORA LICHTMAN: All right, leave us with some advice.

AMIR LEVINE: 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 a way that you’re consistent, available, and responsive. And not in big, long conversation, but it’s really the micro interactions that matter the most.

FLORA LICHTMAN: You have a term for this, right? Seemingly insignificant minor interactions.

AMIR LEVINE: Yes, there’s that SIMIs. 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 have a sense of, oh yeah, that’s nice, I just reached out and I’m hearing right back. Our social brain finds it really gratifying.

And I think when people go to therapy, they think I’m going to need to unpack all these childhood things that have happened to me, all these difficult relationships or 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 SIMIs 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 belief system.

It’s like, oh wow, actually, look at that, relationships are not so fragile. They actually are showing up for me. Or like, whoa, they’re not trying to impinge on my space. So little interactions, and if you learn the certain pitfalls– and I have a chapter for each attachment style to teach them where the pitfalls are. Oftentimes, they repeat the same sort of scenarios again and again, and how to circumvent that to become more secure.

FLORA LICHTMAN: It’s such a hopeful message, that it’s in the small stuff. Amir, I feel like I’ve learned so much. Thank you for joining us today.

AMIR LEVINE: Thank you. It was great being here.

FLORA LICHTMAN: 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/attachment.

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This episode was produced by Shoshannah 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-SciFri. 877-4-SciFri. I’m Flora Lichtman, and we’ll catch you next time.

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