Emotional Intelligence and Attachment Orientations

Abstract

Attachment orientations reflect the inner representations of the self and others that are formed in early childhood. Emotional intelligence is seen as a set of skills involved in the expression of emotion, its effective regulation of emotion, and the use of feelings. Attachment orientations are thought to derive from infants’ experiences with their primary caregivers and are associated with a range of cognitions, emotions and behaviors, including the interpretation of emotional experiences, the use of coping mechanisms, and affect regulation strategies to deal with stressful events and as such are closely related to emotional experiences and the broader concept of emotional intelligence. This chapter presents the foundational studies and recent empirical findings on attachment theory and emotional intelligence and then discusses ways to integrate these two concepts from a dual psychodynamic-cognitive perspective.

1. Introduction

This chapter delves into foundational studies and recent empirical findings in attachment theory and emotional intelligence to illustrate how these two constructs are interrelated from a dual psychodynamic-cognitive perspective. Attachment orientations, which are rooted in early childhood experiences with primary caregivers, play a pivotal role in shaping individuals’ internal representations of the self and others. These orientations are tightly linked to various cognitive, emotional, and behavioral factors, and influence how individuals interpret emotional experiences, employ coping mechanisms, and regulate affect in response to stressors. Emotional intelligence is characterized by the repertoire of skills encompassing the expression and effective regulation of emotions, as well as the astute utilization of feelings. The exploration of the intricate interplay between early attachment experiences and the development of emotional intelligence presented here is aimed at providing a more fine-grained, comprehensive understanding of human emotional functioning.

2. Emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence (EI) has been shown to be a key dimension of individuals’ core characteristics, and is related to a wide range of psychological indices of adjustment and functioning, including greater positive well-being, happiness, flourishing, career-related outcomes, life satisfaction, and mental and physical health [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]. Salovey and Mayer [9] were the first to discuss the concept of emotional intelligence. Since then, numerous models of emotional intelligence have been proposed. The differences in theoretical conceptualizations of EI mainly hinge on the methods used to measure emotional intelligence [10]. The two main streams of research on EI are known as ability-based emotional intelligence and trait-based emotional intelligence. Ability-based emotional intelligence scales use performance measures [11], and define emotional intelligence as the ability to understand, perceive, use and manage emotions [11, 12]. These scales typically administer test items that can include asking participants to rate the effectiveness of an action in managing an emotional situation or to identify the emotion manifested in a facial expression [7]. Trait-based emotional intelligence is assessed on self-report rating scales designed to capture EI as a personality construct [7]. On this type of rating scales, participants typically self-rate their skills on four core abilities (perception, understanding, use, and management) or self-rate various dispositions such as their self-esteem, social competence, empathy, emotionality, impulsiveness, and trait happiness [7, 13]. A meta-analysis by Joseph and Newman [14] found that ability- and trait-based emotional intelligence scales were only moderately correlated with each other (.12 to .26).

Both ability-based EI and trait-based EI have also been found to be related to highly valued outcomes such as academic performance [12], job satisfaction [15, 16] and job performance [16] and positively related to relational facets of life such as satisfaction with one’s romantic relationship [17].

The association between EI and relationship quality [18] suggests it may also be accounted for by attachment theory, which is also linked to relationship quality. Both EI and attachment theory share many interrelated aspects in terms of factors that affect human cognitions, emotions and behaviors. Both were found to be associated with key interpersonal qualities such as attitudes, expectations, modes of communication, and individual traits that people bring to a relationship (for a review see [17, 19]). Yaakobi and Goldenberg [20] reported that attachment internal working models were also associated with the way different individuals disseminate information in virtual social networks, such as Facebook. Higher scores on emotional regulation were found to be positively associated with perceived quality of social interactions among friends [21]. Attachment theory is described in greater depth in Section 3. This is followed by a presentation of its associations with emotional intelligence and related findings. Suggestions for future research are put forward in the conclusion.

3. Attachment theory

Attachment theory, originally developed by Bowlby [22, 23, 24, 25] is a psychological theory derived from the psychodynamic evolutionary approach in psychology which describes the way in which enduring beliefs and tendencies regarding the development of interpersonal relationships between infants and their main caregiver in early childhood are transferred to other interpersonal relationships [19, 26, 27]. Attachment Theory posits a relational framework capturing the ways individuals relate to others both socially and interpersonally [19, 22, 28, 29]. The core notion of Attachment theory is the cognitive-affective process of “attachment,” which is defined as the human propensity to seek out and develop affectional bonds to others [22]. Attachment theory posits that individuals can be categorized along a spectrum anchored by two different orientations, known as avoidance and anxiety. The anxiety dimension reflects the extent to which individuals fear that partners will fail to be available or responsive in time of need. The avoidance dimension reflects the extent to which individuals mistrust their partner’s goodwill and opt to maintain behavioral independence and emotional distance (for a review see [19]).

The constructs of avoidance and anxiety can account for the ways individuals perceive themselves and others, which includes their and others’ emotions, the ways people perceive the underpinnings and outcomes of their and others’ emotions, and the ways individuals choose to respond to these emotions in interpersonal circumstances [7].

Numerous empirical studies have confirmed Bowlby’s intuition that early internal attachment models are predictive of behavior and interpersonal relationships in adulthood [19, 30, 31, 32, 33]. One of the most frequently employed measures of attachment orientation is known as The Experiences in Close Relationships Scale (ECR; developed by Brennan et al. [34]) that rates individuals on the two independent, roughly orthogonal dimensions of anxiety and avoidance.

For example, attachment orientations were shown to moderate the way people respond to social exclusion or ostracism immediately after they experience social rejection and after a delay [32, 33, 35, 36]. More avoidant individuals were less distressed after being ostracized whereas more anxious individuals exhibited more distress. Findings have also revealed the ways differences in attachment orientation can moderate the use of social coping mechanisms to deal with stressful events. Parenthood for example, was only a successful terror management strategy in coping with impending death among less avoidant individuals [37].

More secure individuals tend to score low on both these dimensions and employ constructive and effective affect-regulation strategies. Individuals scoring high on anxiety or avoidance are considered insecurely attached and draw on hyper-activation or deactivation, respectively, to deal with perceived threats [38]. These aspects of affect regulation strategies can thus be seen as closely related to core effects of EI and their relations to cognitive, affective and behavioral outcomes. EI was originally defined as including emotional regulation, appraisal, and expression of emotion, and the use of feelings to motivate, plan, and achieve ([9, p. 185). The hyperactivation affect regulation strategies of more anxious individuals and the deactivation strategies used by more avoidant individuals are maladaptive, and hence are less effective emotional regulation mechanisms.

A recent empirical study [39] indicated that attachment anxiety, but not avoidance, was correlated with problems in impulse control and repairing negative moods. Avoidance, but not anxiety, was associated with the devaluation of attending to feelings. Two crucial mediating variables were also identified: a lack of clarity regarding emotions and a lack of strategies for emotion regulation. Other works have found that people characterized by avoidant attachment exhibit diminished awareness of their emotional state and demonstrate lower reactivity to their emotions. In contrast, individuals with anxious attachment display heightened emotional awareness but encounter difficulties in both recognizing their feelings and managing impulses [40]. Other studies have reported that in response to negative affect induction, individuals with high attachment anxiety responded with an affect-congruent pattern that was characterized by poorer recall of positive information and more stable/global attributions of negative events, thus corresponding to their hyperactivation affect regulation strategies. In contrast, individuals with high attachment avoidance showed no significant cognitive effect of negative affect, thus reflecting deactivation affect regulation strategies [41].

The ways insecure anxious and/or avoidant individuals construct reality and social relationships as well as their personal motivations can be linked to the other components of EI, and specifically to the way people appraise and express their emotions and use their feelings to achieve their goals. For example, the anxious fear of being abandoned or tendencies to flee social situations characterizing more avoidant individuals may lead to biased and maladaptive appraisals and inappropriate expressions of emotions by these individuals.

Six studies revealed that anxious-ambivalent individuals tend to overestimate self-other similarities whereas avoidant individuals underestimate this, unlike secure individuals who provide more accurate similarity scores [42]. The findings showed that these distinctions were heightened by negative emotions but alleviated by positive emotions. Further, the distortions in insecure individuals were a consequence of alterations in their representations of both themselves and others. In 5 other studies investigating the associations between adult attachment styles and the perception of trust in close relationships, individuals with secure attachment expressed greater trust in their partners. They also presented increased accessibility to positive trust-related memories, reported more positive trust-related experiences over a 3-week period, and employed more constructive coping strategies when faced with trust violations compared to participants with insecure attachment styles. Although intimacy attainment emerged as the primary trust-related goal for all attachment groups, anxious-ambivalent individuals pursued the additional goal of security attainment, whereas avoidant individuals pursued the additional goal of control attainment [43]. Four other studies exploring the relationships between attachment style and strategic variations in self-appraisals found that secure individuals maintained a consistently positive self-perception. Avoidant individuals exhibited a positive self-view, while anxious-ambivalent individuals displayed a negative self-view. These self-views were heightened by distress arousal and diminished by factors inhibiting the activation of regulatory mechanisms. The results indicated that the self-perceptions of insecure individuals fluctuated as a function of specific attachment-related concerns and needs. The positive self-view of avoidant individuals was linked to their efforts to validate their sense of self-reliance, whereas the negative self-view of anxious-ambivalent individuals was associated with their endeavors to elicit compassion and affection from others [44].

Recent social-psychological approaches to attachment theory have addressed other key psychodynamic issues beyond close personal relationships, including key organizational processes and outcomes [19, 29, 45]. Attachment styles were shown to play a significant role in the workplace, because they can capture employees’ perceptions of themselves and their colleagues in close and supportive interactions as well as their willingness to engage in these relationships [46]. In the workplace, attachment orientations affect the associations between employees’/managers’ beliefs about employees’ abilities as well as their beliefs in the abilities of their work group, and employee performance in organizational settings. Other studies have indicated that attachment orientations impact the ways managers perceive the availability of employees’ internal and external resources, including their social resources, which in turn influence managers’ general beliefs as to the relative importance of these resources when predicting employee performance.

Thus, overall, attachment orientations in adults are related to both intrapersonal as well as interpersonal factors and can be seen as complementing the concept of emotional intelligence. In particular, these include affect regulation strategies, emotional competencies, as well as one’s expectations and beliefs about and attitudes toward others [19, 27, 47]. Attachment theory is rooted in the interpersonal origins of adult emotionality through its fundamental premise that emotional defenses linked to insecure attachment impede the processing of emotional messages. This inhibition also obstructs the awareness of feelings and intentions within the self and others [22, 25]. Adult attachment orientations encompass both affective and cognitive regulations and strategies, which influence individuals’ emotional responses and their relationships. Individuals categorized as secure, anxious/ambivalent, and avoidant adopt fundamentally distinct strategies for regulating affect and processing emotional information [48]. The convergence of cognitive and emotional processes plays a pivotal role in adult attachment and is a core component of EI [49]. Emotional regulation is thought to function as a trait-like stylistic process in adult attachment [49, 50]. Studies on the cognitive and affective dimensions of attachment orientations have shed light on the ways in which individual differences influence the perception, facilitation, understanding, and management of emotions, all of which have parallels with EI [19, 49]. Empirical findings have consistently confirmed the positive correlations between secure attachment and the facilitation, understanding and management of emotions [49] and negative correlations with EI abilities in the case of attachment anxiety.

Supporting this line of reasoning, in the organizational literature, studies have shown that EI is closely associated with job satisfaction and performance in both managers and employees [16]. Thus, the underlying mechanisms associated with attachment orientations (e.g., fear of abandonment and social avoidance) are also likely to be linked to the key aspects of EI related to work settings, such as affect regulation strategies and social appraisals, as well as with the ways employees and managers communicate with each other. This is applicable to numerous organizational and medical settings. Studies have also found associations between attachment orientations, emotional intelligence, and medical communication [51, 52]. For example, findings revealed that doctors’ attachment orientations and emotional intelligence are associated with their patients’ emotional expressions in primary care consultations [51]. Specifically, the findings revealed that doctors’ attachment anxiety was negatively associated, and attachment avoidance was positively associated, with patients’ cues (indications of unpleasant emotion and that lacked clarity) and concerns (a clear unambiguous expression of an unpleasant current or recent emotion where the emotion is explicitly verbalized). Avoidance scores were found to be positively associated in that EI was negatively related to patients’ cues and concerns. In another article, Marks et al. [53] found that EI mediated the relationship between adults’ insecure attachment and subjective health outcomes. Anxious and avoidant attachment orientations were both associated with lower EI, which in turn was associated with more detrimental subjective health outcomes (somatic, anxiety/insomnia, severe depression and social dysfunction). Further, EI was shown to mediate the relationship between adult attachment anxiety and avoidance orientations and subjective well-being [54]. Specifically, the results indicated that both attachment anxiety and avoidance were negatively associated with EI as well as with subjective well-being. EI was found to be positively associated with subjective well-being.

Organizational researchers have demonstrated that employees’ attachment orientations can influence a variety of work-related attitudes and behaviors, including relationships with leaders, coworkers, mentors, and the organization, which function as sources of social support and membership [55, 56]. For example, secure attachment was found to be negatively related to career indecision (lack of readiness, lack of information, and inconsistent information) and emotional intelligence mediated the link between attachment security and career indecision [57]. Specifically, attachment security was found to be positively associated with EI and EI was found to be negatively associated with both a lack of information and inconsistent information), but not with a lack of readiness. Attachment orientations were also found to be associated with entrepreneurship [58]. The findings showed that attachment orientations not only predicted the tendency to become an entrepreneur but also the type of entrepreneur they would become. Specifically, attachment anxiety accounted for the largest share of the variability in becoming an entrepreneur. Both anxiety and avoidant dimensions predicted entrepreneur characteristics and attitudes.

Similarly, attachment orientations may also moderate responses to negative organizational circumstances such as organizational closure [59]. Dispositional avoidance (but not anxiety) moderated the effects of an organizational priming condition (closure vs. control) on employees’ work priorities. By contrast, recall of an attachment event interacted with dispositional avoidance (but not anxiety) on work priorities after organizational closure priming. The saliency of organizational closure (the cessation of the activity of the organization) mitigated the moderating role of individual differences on the effects of both dispositional orientation and priming of an attachment event on work priorities.

One possible advantage of attachment theory in accounting for interpersonal behavior is that attachment styles simultaneously reflect two separate working models: one related to the self and one related to others. Since attachment styles reflect individuals’ self-image and other-image, they can be used to predict intrapersonal characteristics (based on self-perceptions) and interpersonal characteristics (based on perceptions of others; [60]). Together, these models have been found to predict individuals’ feelings and behaviors toward work and employment relationships [61], as well as the extent to which people can cope with stressors in the work environment [61, 62]. These factors are also tightly related to abilities subsumed under EI. For example, strategies for coping with stressful situations and interpersonal communication have both been associated with attachment orientations as well as with EI components such as affect regulation and emotion evaluation, suggesting that the two may have interdependent effects on cognitions, emotions and behaviors.

The early Hazan and Shaver [63] study showed that secure employees reported higher work success whereas anxious employees reported that they were unable to meet work deadlines and complete work tasks, which implies lower performance. Avoidant employees reported that they persisted at work-related tasks, refrained from obtaining help, tended to work alone, and gave themselves lower self-ratings on job performance. An EI perspective suggests that more avoidant individuals may have lesser emotional intelligence capabilities. This claim was found empirically, as described above [51, 54, 57]. More recent studies have found that higher secure attachment is positively correlated with team performance [64, 65]. Ronen and Zuroff [45] argued that greater attachment security tended to predict more dominant leadership and coalition-building behaviors, which in turn led to higher job performance and job promotion. Hence these more secure individuals may have greater EI capabilities, in terms of emotional expressions and appraisals.

Studies have also found a direct correlation between secure attachment and organizational citizenship behaviors [66], as well as negative correlations with insecure attachment [67]. Other studies have shown that secure attachment is negatively related to counterproductive work behaviors and that securely attached individuals showed greater vigor at work and extra-role performance known as organizational citizenship behavior [66]. Mikulincer and Shaver [19] suggested that secure attachment promotes job performance because it makes people feel capable of taking on challenges and confident that they will get others’ support when needed. Secure individuals’ confidence and tendency to trust others and avoid becoming easily distracted by worries about their relationships may make them more effective and efficient at their jobs [19].

Bartholomew and Horowitz [68] put forward a taxonomy of four prototypical attachment patterns that combine individuals’ concepts or images of the self (positive or negative) and their views of others (positive or negative) which can also account parsimoniously for group and team behavior in organizations. For example, negative perceptions of others, which is a characteristic of attachment avoidance, is likely to cause both employees and managers to evaluate collective efficacy as a less effective resource for enhancing performance. High avoidant individuals, as compared to low avoidant individuals, tend to perceive social connections with their colleagues as neither necessary nor desirable [29]. These individuals favor detachment and emotional distance, prefer to work alone, are likely to focus on non-relational aspects of work, do not attend social gatherings [29, 55, 63, 69], do not acknowledge the value of interacting with others, and tend to be more suspicious of others’ intentions [70]. Groups that involve greater levels of interdependence threaten high avoidant individuals, who have a strong need for self-reliance [19, 69]. Individuals high on attachment anxiety have little belief that others will contribute to their performance, and may also worry about being unappreciated by team members [29].

In contrast, less anxious or avoidant individuals (that is, individuals with higher attachment security), are likely to manifest a greater positive association between self/collective efficacies and performance. Individuals high on attachment anxiety tend to view tasks requiring teamwork as threatening, whereas avoidant individuals see them as unchallenging [65]. It was argued and empirically found that leaders’ secure attachment was positively associated with behaviors that conveyed dominance and support, which contribute to effective functioning and performance in both task- and relationship-focused situations [71, 72, 73]. These findings also hint that leaders characterized by insecure attachment fail to provide their followers with support, show poor leadership performance in task-related and emotional focused situations, and exhibit more self-serving and less prosocial motivations to lead [71, 74].

Theoretical and empirical evidence also shows that secure attachment reflects an individual’s belief that other people will be responsive and supportive when needed, and is associated with greater levels of optimism, positive views of the self and others, and emotional stability [19]. Confirming the links between EI and attachment orientations, a recent meta-analysis of 26 studies [7] found that both attachment security and insecurity were both significantly associated with EI. A meta-analysis showed that attachment security was positively correlated with trait EI but that there were only small to medium correlations or no correlations with ability EI, whereas both attachment anxiety as well as attachment avoidance were found to be negatively correlated with both ability and trait EI [7, 75]. The findings also revealed that attachment anxiety was more strongly and negatively associated with both ability and trait EI than attachment avoidance [75]. Attachment avoidance was also significantly and negatively related to EI. Finally, the magnitude of the association between attachment orientations and EI was stronger when EI was measured as a trait than when measured as an ability [7]. Thus, attachment orientations that form early in life as a result of infants’ interactions with their primary caregivers may lead to the later development of the traits and abilities of EI. The differences between the results for trait vs. ability EI may result from changes in the affective deficits presented in preschool-aged children who were included in some studies or avoidant adults’ insights into their own emotional competencies [7, 40, 76]. However, these possibilities should be further examined in future work to elucidate the reasons for this finding.

4. Conclusion

This chapter explored the associations between two dominant theories of human behavior today: emotional intelligence and attachment orientation. Empirical findings have revealed that EI is positively associated with various outcomes such as academic and job performance, satisfaction with one’s job and with one’s romantic relationships as well as with well-being, and happiness. Two main streams of research have incorporated examinations of ability-based EI and trait-based EI. The different attachment orientations, which develop in infancy, are related to different cognitive, affective and behavioral abilities, which were also found to be empirically associated with different affective tendencies such as affect regulation strategies. Whereas more secure attachment was positively correlated with various types of EI capabilities, more anxious and avoidant attachment patterns were more negatively associated with EI capabilities. The better resources developed by more secure individuals may thus facilitate and provide the resources associated with EI, and hence lead to more positive outcomes. In contrast, the cognitive and affective deficits and processes found in more insecure (anxious and/or avoidant) individuals may inhibit the EI resources needed to achieve these outcomes. It thus contributes to the growing body of research on the importance of interdisciplinary explanations of human cognition, emotion and behavior through different theoretical lenses and suggests new integrative directions for further investigation of these two theoretical perspectives in explaining human behavior.