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Personality and Individual Dierences 44 (2008) 12461257

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Adult attachment, parenting experiences, and core beliefs

about self and others
Alison Wearden *, Isabel Peters, Katherine Berry,
Christine Barrowclough, Tom Liversidge
University of Manchester, School of Psychological Sciences, Coupland 1 Building, Manchester M13 9PL, UK

Received 15 July 2007; received in revised form 22 November 2007; accepted 26 November 2007
Available online 4 January 2008

Abstract

The aim of this study was to examine whether reports of parental care-giving and attachment represen-
tations were associated with the self- and other-evaluative core beliefs that are implicated in cognitive mod-
els of psychopathology. Undergraduate students (n = 389; 283 [73%] female; mean age 21.9 years, s.d. 5.25)
completed questionnaire measures of attachment, self- and other-evaluative core beliefs, parental care-
giving style, and negative aect. As hypothesised, with negative aect controlled for, negative self-evalua-
tive core beliefs were correlated with anxious attachment (rs = .397, p < .001) and with inconsistent or
ambivalent maternal care-giving, but the latter eect was conned to females (rs = .303, p < .001). Corre-
lations between negative other-evaluative core beliefs, avoidant attachment and cold and rejecting parent-
ing were rendered non-signicant when negative aect was controlled for (rs = .085 and rs = .072,
respectively). Warm and responsive parenting was correlated with positive self- and other-evaluative core
beliefs. Our ndings are consistent with a role for parenting experiences and attachment representations in
the development of negative self-evaluative core beliefs, but not negative other-evaluative core beliefs.
These ndings may both inform our understanding of psychopathology and have implications for thera-
peutic relationships.
2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Adult attachment; Core beliefs; Parenting

*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 161 275 2684.
E-mail address: alison.wearden@manchester.ac.uk (A. Wearden).

0191-8869/$ - see front matter 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.paid.2007.11.019
 A. Wearden et al. / Personality and Individual Dierences 44 (2008) 12461257 1247

1. Introduction

Cognitive schemas (Beck, 1964; Beck, Rush, Shaw, & Emery, 1979) consist of a set of core be-
liefs and assumptions about the world which serve as a structure for screening, coding and eval-
uating impinging stimuli (Beck, 1964, p. 564). Included in schema are core evaluative beliefs
about the self and others, such as I am (un)worthy of love or other people are (un)trustwor-
thy. Core beliefs about the self and others have been shown to contribute to the development and
maintenance of symptoms in various forms of psychopathology, including depression (Teasdale &
Barnard, 1993), eating disorders (Fairburn, Cooper, & Shafran, 2003), and psychosis (Barrowc-
lough et al., 2003).
As noted by Fowler et al. (2006), there are gaps in our understanding of how core beliefs devel-
op. Shah and Waller (2002) showed that ve core beliefs from the Young Schema Questionnaire
(Young, 1994) (dependence/incompetence, emotional inhibition, failure to achieve, unrelenting
standards and vulnerability to harm) mediated relationships between poor maternal bonding
and paternal overprotection and depressive psychopathology. However, their study did not focus
specically on self- or other-evaluative core beliefs. The present study attempts to enhance our
understanding of the development of self- and other-evaluative core beliefs by examining the pos-
sible role of constructs derived from attachment theory (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978;
Bowlby, 1973; Bowlby, 1980; Bowlby, 1982/69). Platts, Tyson, and Mason (2002) note the clear
parallels between cognitive schemas described by Beck and colleagues (Beck, 1964; Beck et al.,
1979) and attachment representations (Bowlby, 1973). Furthermore, insecure attachment has been
shown to be associated with a wide variety of psychopathologies, including psychosis (e.g. Berry,
Barrowclough, & Wearden, 2007a; Platts et al., 2002). There is therefore reason to think that
attachment theory may provide some insight into the development of maladaptive cognitive sche-
mas (Platts, Mason, & Tyson, 2005).
Bowlby (1980) suggested that infants draw on experiences with caregivers to develop internal
attachment representations, or working models, of themselves and others in relationships, and
that these attachment representations subsequently shape expectations about future relationships.
Thus, a child might develop beliefs about whether others would be consistently available or not,
and whether they would be responsive and caring, or cold and rejecting; in parallel the child would
develop beliefs about whether she or he was worthy of receiving love and care, and about the va-
lue of close relationships.
Attachment representations which start to develop in infancy manifest themselves in behav-
iour and aective states which may continue into adulthood. Bartholomew and Horowitz
(1991) conceptualise attachment along two independent underlying behavioural/aective
dimensions: anxious attachment, which relates to a working model of the self in relationships,
and avoidant attachment, which relates to a working model of others in relationships. People
with high levels of anxious attachment tend to have a poor model of themselves in relation-
ships, to worry about being unloved or abandoned, to seek reassurance and to experience neg-
ative aect. Those with high levels of avoidant attachment have a poor model of others in
relationships, deny vulnerability, profess no need for close relationships, and tend to avoid
intimacy. Thus, attachment representations can be conceptualised as cognitive schema for rela-
tionships, formed in response to experience with childhood caregivers and later interpersonal
experiences, which drive attachment behaviours, such as reassurance seeking or avoidance of
1248 A. Wearden et al. / Personality and Individual Dierences 44 (2008) 12461257

relationships, and which also have attachment-related emotional consequences, such as anxiety
about relationships or hostility.
It is thought that secure attachment arises when children have received consistently warm and
responsive care-giving, as such children come to see others as dependable and themselves as wor-
thy of love and care (Ainsworth et al., 1978). Attachment anxiety is thought to arise when care has
been inconsistently responsive. Children in receipt of such care may become hyper-vigilant and
fearful of abandonment, and may therefore exhibit clingy behaviour, particularly when dis-
tressed. Avoidant attachment is thought to arise from consistently unresponsive or rejecting, or
over-intrusive care-giving. Children who have experienced these types of care-giving may have dif-
culty trusting that others will be appropriately available for them, and therefore learn to be self-
reliant and to avoid depending on others (Crowell & Treboux, 1995). Attachment representations
start to develop, and attachment behaviours can be observed, when infants are pre-verbal (Ains-
worth et al., 1978), and can therefore be reasonably assumed to precede the development of core
self-and other-evaluative beliefs.
There is some support in the literature for a theorised link between parental care-giving styles
and childrens attachment styles (de Wol & van Ijzendoorn, 1997). Furthermore, self-reported
attachment style in adulthood is related to reports of parental care-giving (Hazan & Shaver,
1987). However, the stability of attachment representations from childhood to adulthood has
been debated (Fraley, 2002). While some work shows that attachment representations developed
in childhood tend to persist into adulthood (Waters, Merrick, Treboux, Crowell, & Albersheim,
2000), there is evidence that major trauma or upheaval in close personal relationships (Rothbard
& Shaver, 1994) or, conversely, particularly supportive later relationships (Pearson, Cohn, Cow-
an, & Cowan, 1994) may lead to revision of working models. An adults attachment orientation is
therefore likely to reect his or her earliest attachment relationships (usually with parents) but
also later interpersonal experiences (Fraley, 2002), and, as a result of later inuences, may show
variation from relationship to relationship (Ross & Spinner, 2001).
The present study was designed to test, in a student sample, the idea that attachment represen-
tations could function as a link between early experiences with parents and the development of
core beliefs about the self and others. Our primary predictions were that negative self-evaluative
core beliefs would be associated with attachment anxiety and negative other-evaluative core be-
liefs with attachment avoidance. We predicted that participants whose parents were warm and
responsive would have low levels of attachment anxiety and avoidance, and would have positive
self- and other-evaluative beliefs. We further predicted that participants who reported parental
inconsistency or ambivalence would have higher levels of attachment anxiety and negative self-
evaluative beliefs, although we expected the associations between parenting style and core beliefs
to be weak, given that we would expect there to be many other inuences on core beliefs. Simi-
larly, we predicted a correlation between parental coldness or rejection and attachment avoidance,
and a weaker association with negative other-evaluative beliefs. Finally, we wished to test whether
attachment representations, which might reasonably be assumed to be temporally prior to the
development of core beliefs, mediated any associations between parental care-giving and core be-
liefs. In the light of recent work showing gender dierences in associations between attachment
style and early experiences (Matsuoka et al., 2006) we rst looked for gender dierences on key
variables. In testing these hypothesised associations, we controlled for the inuence of negative
aect, which has been shown to confound associations between self-report measures in the emo-
 A. Wearden et al. / Personality and Individual Dierences 44 (2008) 12461257 1249

tional, health and relationship domains (Watson & Pennebaker, 1988; Wearden, Lamberton,
Crook, & Walsh, 2005).

2. Method

2.1. Participants and procedure

Undergraduate students, recruited via emails, were directed to a University of Manchester in-
tra-net site. Three hundred and eighty nine participants responded. Participants provided their
age, gender, relationship status and ethnicity, and then completed the questionnaires described
below on-line. The sequence of the questionnaires was randomized to control for order eects.

2.2. The Psychosis Attachment Measure (PAM; Berry, Band, Corcoran, Barrowclough, &
Wearden, 2007)

The 16-item PAM, which has both self-report and informant versions, was developed to assess
attachment anxiety and avoidance in a range of samples, including in samples of patients with psy-
chosis (Berry, Barrowclough, & Wearden, 2006). Items were based on existing measures of attach-
ment (Brennan, Clark, & Shaver, 1988) but, to make the PAM more suitable for use with patients
with psychosis, no specic reference is made to romantic relationships. The PAM can be adapted to
measure global attachment or attachment in specic relationships (Berry, Wearden, & Barrowc-
lough, 2007b). The self-report, global attachment, version used here has been tested and validated
in non-clinical student samples and has been shown to have good reliability and concurrent validity
with other attachment measures (Berry, Wearden, Barrowclough, & Liversidge, 2006; Berry et al.,
2007). There are two subscales each of 8 statements (e.g. I tend to get upset, anxious or angry if
other people are not there when I need them, I try to cope with stressful situations on my own.)
rated on 4 point-Likert scales, which are summed and the mean calculated. Higher scores indicate
more anxiety and avoidance. Alphas for the present study were .85 for anxiety and .82 for avoidance.

2.3. The Brief Core Schema Scales (BCSS; Fowler et al., 2006)

The 24-item BCSS assesses core beliefs concerning self and others. We used the authors alter-
native version B, the psychometric properties of which have been tested in samples of patients
with psychosis and undergraduate students (Fowler et al., 2006). It consists of 6 positive and 6
negative self-evaluative statements, and 6 positive and 6 negative other-evaluative statements
which are summed to form four scores: negative-self, positive-self, negative-other and positive-
other. Alphas in the present study were .87 for negative-self, .76 for positive- self, .86 for nega-
tive-other, and .90 for positive-other.

2.4. Parent Care-giving Style Questionnaire (PCSQ; Hazan & Shaver, 1986)

The six-item PCSQ assesses participants perceptions of parental care-giving during their rst
16 years, by rating three paragraphs for similarity to their parents styles. The paragraphs describe
1250 A. Wearden et al. / Personality and Individual Dierences 44 (2008) 12461257

warm and responsive, rejecting or non-responsive, and ambivalent or inconsistent parenting. Each
paragraph is rated twice on a 7 point Likert scale, once for the mother and once for the father.

2.5. The Positive and Negative Aect Schedule (PANAS; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988)

Participants rate the extent to which they have experienced ten positive and ten negative aec-
tive states in the past week. Scores on individual items are summed to produce positive and neg-
ative aect scores. Alphas in the present study were .90 for positive aect and .86 for negative
aect.

2.6. Data analysis

After establishing that variables were approximately normally distributed, associations between
core belief and other variables were explored using partial correlations, controlling for negative
aect, in the entire sample and separately for females and males. Where there were missing data,
all available data were included in the analysis. Forty-four correlations were computed between
perceived parenting, attachment and core-belief variables. Therefore Bonferroni corrections of al-
pha/44 were applied and the adjusted alpha set at p = .001 throughout. Eect sizes for signicant
correlations are reported, using Cohens standards (Cohen, 1988): r = .1 = small eect;
r = .3 = medium eect; r = .5 = large eect. Hierarchical regression was used to perform media-
tion analysis, following the procedures set out by Baron and Kenny (1986).

3. Results

3.1. Sample characteristics

The sample was aged between 17 and 56 years (mean 21.9, s.d. 5.3), and 283 (73%) were female.
Three hundred and twelve (80%) participants were single, 52 (13%) cohabiting, 12 (3%) married, 2
(1%) were widowed and 13 (3%) provided no response to this question. Three hundred and thirty
participants (85%) gave their ethnic identity as White, Caucasian or European, 27 (7%) as
Asian, 12 (3%) as mixed, 8 (2%) as Black (African or Caribbean), and the remaining 2 (1%) as
other.
Table 1 provides summary scores for the questionnaire measures.

3.1.1. Preliminary analyses

Anxious and avoidant attachment scores were not signicantly correlated (r = .080). Males had
higher scores than females for avoidant attachment (mean 1.60, s.d. .52 versus mean 1.27, s.d. .62,
t[380] = 4.825, p < .001) and negative other-evaluative core beliefs (mean 8.9, s.d. 4.2 versus
mean 7.0, s.d. 4.7, t[381] = 3.770, p < .001). Females had higher anxious attachment scores than
males (mean 1.33, s.d. .73 versus mean 1.13, s.d. .66, t[379] = 2.371, p = .018). Males and females
did not dier on other variables. Negative aect was strongly correlated with both attachment
anxiety (r = .608, p < .001) and negative self-evaluative core-beliefs (r = .537, p < .001) and was
moderately or weakly correlated with all other variables (range, r = .147 to r = .353). Negative
 A. Wearden et al. / Personality and Individual Dierences 44 (2008) 12461257 1251

Table 1
Mean (s.d.) scores on questionnaire measures of core beliefs, positive and negative aectivity, parenting styles and
attachment
Mean s.d. Range n
Negative self-evaluative core beliefs 5.33 4.01 021 384
Positive self-evaluative core beliefs 13.70 4.70 024 387
Negative other-evaluative core beliefs 7.51 4.63 024 383
Positive other-evaluative core beliefs 12.52 3.95 124 385
Positive aect 31.36 8.58 1050 373
Negative aect 24.00 8.27 1050 374
Warm and responsive mother 5.76 1.40 27 377
Warm and responsive father 4.86 1.87 17 386
Cold or rejecting mother 1.73 1.37 17 389
Cold or rejecting father 2.45 1.83 17 382
Inconsistent or ambivalent mother 3.05 1.90 17 386
Inconsistent or ambivalent father 3.43 1.91 17 384
PAM anxiety 1.27 0.72 03 381
PAM avoidance 1.37 0.61 02.88 382

aect was therefore controlled for in subsequent analyses. Correlations for females and males sep-
arately are reported only when they dier from the entire sample.

3.1.2. Correlations between attachment measures and core beliefs

With negative aect controlled for, as predicted, attachment anxiety was moderately correlated
with negative self-evaluative core beliefs, but not with negative other-evaluative core beliefs (Table
2). Contrary to predictions, attachment avoidance was not signicantly correlated with negative
other-evaluative core beliefs. Both anxiety and avoidance were weakly to moderately negatively
correlated with positive self- and other-evaluative core beliefs.

3.1.3. Correlations between attachment and reports of parenting

With negative aect controlled for, predicted negative correlations between attachment anxiety
and avoidance, and warm and consistent parenting were weak and not signicant at the p = .001
level. As expected, attachment anxiety was weakly correlated with inconsistent or ambivalent par-
enting but this only reached signicance for maternal care-giving, and only in female participants
(females rs = .264, p < .001; males rs = .062). Contrary to predictions, attachment avoidance was
not signicantly correlated with any parenting style (Table 2).

3.1.4. Correlations between parenting style and core beliefs

With negative aect controlled for, as expected, warm and responsive parenting was weakly
correlated with positive self-evaluative core beliefs, the association with paternal care-giving
being of moderate strength in males (rs = .345, p < .001). Additionally, paternal warm and
responsive care-giving was associated with positive other-evaluative core beliefs. Inconsistent
or ambivalent maternal care-giving was weakly correlated with negative beliefs about the self
in females only (females, rs = .303, p < .001; males rs = .078). Contrary to predictions, cold or
rejecting parenting by either parent was not correlated with negative core beliefs about others,
 1252
A. Wearden et al. / Personality and Individual Dierences 44 (2008) 12461257
Table 2
Partial correlations (rs), with negative aectivity controlled for, between attachment, core belief and parenting style variables in the entire sample
Warm Warm Cold or Cold or Inconsistent Inconsistent Negative Positive Negative Positive
responsive responsive rejecting rejecting ambivalent ambivalent self self other other
mother father mother father mother father beliefs beliefs beliefs beliefs
Anxious attachment rs .130 .134 .024 .092 .189* .148 .397* .232* .125 .174*
Avoidant attachment rs .118 .125 .085 .130 .130 .090 .249* .347* .129 .284*
Negative self rs .143 .171* .151 .211* .225* .139
Positive self rs .216* .189* .093 .124 .215* .076
Negative other rs .009 .069 .072 .036 .018 .050
Positive other rs .159 .263* .104 .188* .185* .181*
*
p 6 .001
 A. Wearden et al. / Personality and Individual Dierences 44 (2008) 12461257 1253

Table 3
Final regression equation predicting negative self-evaluative core beliefs by maternal inconsistent or ambivalent
caregiving and anxious attachment, with negative aectivity and gender controlled for
B Standard error B b Signicance
Constant 3.175 .728 <.001
Gender 1.131 .357 .127 .002
Negative aectivity .140 .025 .287 <.001
Maternal inconsistent/ambivalent care-giving .285 .087 .134 .001
Anxious attachment 2.224 .287 .400 <.001
Adjusted R2 for nal equation = .432, F[4,354] = 69.138, p < .001

but, for paternal care-giving only, was weakly correlated with negative self-evaluative core be-
liefs (Table 2).

3.1.5. Did attachment representations mediate associations between parenting style and core beliefs?
According to Baron and Kenny (1986), a variable functions as a mediator when the following
conditions are satised: (a) the mediating variable is signicantly correlated with the independent
variable; (b) the mediator is signicantly correlated with the dependent variable, and (c) when cor-
relations between the mediator and the independent and dependent variables are controlled, a pre-
viously signicant relationship between the independent variable and the dependent variable is
signicantly diminished. Inspection of Table 2 reveals that, as hypothesised, anxious attachment
fulls criteria (a) and (b) as a potential mediator of the association between ambivalent and incon-
sistent maternal care-giving and negative self-evaluative core beliefs. Our nal analysis tested this
pathway, in the sample of 359 participants for whom data was available on all of these variables
and negative aect. Avoidant attachment did not full Baron and Kennys criteria for mediation
and was therefore not analysed further.
A series of regression analyses were carried out. First, negative aect and gender were entered
as predictors of negative self-evaluative beliefs, and accounted for 30.2% of the variance (adj
R2 = .302, F[2,356] = 78.394, p < .001). Next, with negative aectivity and gender in the analysis,
maternal inconsistent or ambivalent care-giving accounted for an additional 2.4% of the variance
in anxious attachment (R2 change = .024, F[1,355] for change = 14.253, p < .001). In a separate
analysis, with negative aect and gender already in the equation, maternal inconsistent or ambiv-
alent care-giving accounted for an additional 3.7% of the variance in negative self-evaluative core
beliefs (R2 change = .037, F[1,355] for change = 20.188, p < .001), and the standardized beta value
was .197. Finally, with negative aect, gender and anxious attachment in the equation, the stand-
ardised beta value for maternal inconsistent or ambivalent care-giving as a predictor of negative
self-evaluative core beliefs fell to .134, p = .001 (Sobel z = 3.332, p < .001), consistent with a par-
tial mediation eect. The parameters for the nal regression equation are shown in Table 3.

4. Discussion

To summarise our ndings, once the confounding eect of negative aect had been controlled
for, negative self-evaluative core beliefs were moderately correlated with anxious attachment and
1254 A. Wearden et al. / Personality and Individual Dierences 44 (2008) 12461257

weakly correlated with reports of inconsistent or ambivalent maternal care-giving, but this was
conned to females. A mediation analysis, while unable to prove the direction of causality,
suggested that some of the association between reports of inconsistent and ambivalent maternal
care-giving and negative self-evaluative core beliefs is explained by anxious attachment represen-
tations. Contrary to predictions, negative other-evaluative core beliefs were not correlated with
either attachment avoidance or with cold or rejecting parenting. In line with attachment theory,
warm and responsive parenting was associated with positive self-evaluative core beliefs.
Our ndings are in line with Bartholomew and Horowitzs (1991) proposition that anxious
attachment is related to inconsistent parenting experiences which leave the infant or child uncer-
tain of his or her own worth. Our ndings should be interpreted cautiously for a number of rea-
sons. Firstly, we do not have a measure of the actual parenting that these young people
experienced. Responses on the parenting style questionnaire do not tell us what care was actually
given, but how, in young adulthood, participants appraise the care that they received in child-
hood. The measure is therefore subject to recall and interpretative biases. Additionally, adult
attachment relationships are dierent from those in infancy in that they are more obviously reci-
procal, and open to a wider variety of inuences (Crowell & Treboux, 1995). Participants may
have received non-optimal care in infancy, but later relationship experiences might have altered
their attachment representations (Pearson et al., 1994). While our ndings suggest that processes
which start in infancy may have an enduring inuence on core beliefs about the self, it is also pos-
sible that other, unmeasured, variables may contribute to the associations we have observed.
While, to our knowledge, no studies to date have specically examined associations between
self- and other-evaluative core beliefs, current attachment, and reports of parenting style, our nd-
ings are consistent with those from previous work of a similar nature. Blissett et al. (2006) assessed
how current attachment relationships with parents in female undergraduates correlated with a
range of core beliefs assessed by the Young Schema Questionnaire (Young, 1998). The authors
found that disconnection and rejection core beliefs, which tap expectations that relationship
needs will be reliably met, predicted current attachment relationships with the father, while a
much wider range of core beliefs were associated with attachment relationships with the mother.
Furthermore, the authors highlighted that a number of core belief themes were unrelated to
parental attachment relationships suggesting an important role for non-parental interpersonal
processes in the development of core beliefs.
Our study examined associations between beliefs, adult attachment and memories of relation-
ships with both mothers and fathers. Attachment researchers have traditionally paid much more
attention to maternal rather than paternal care. While associations between negative self-evalua-
tive core beliefs and inconsistent or ambivalent maternal care were conned to females, our nd-
ings suggest relationships with both parents inuence beliefs and attachment styles in adulthood
(Blissett et al., 2006; Levy, Blatt, & Shaver, 1998). Indeed, we found a stronger relationship be-
tween warm and responsive paternal care-giving and positive self-evaluative core beliefs in males
than in females.
In our study, cold or rejecting parenting did not predict avoidant attachment or negative core-
beliefs about others; in fact negative other-evaluative core beliefs were not predicted by any of the
other variables in the study. Negative expectations of others in relationships and negative other-
evaluative core beliefs therefore appear to be two dierent things, with the latter deriving from a
wide range of life experiences. The possibility that respondents were unwilling to endorse negative
 A. Wearden et al. / Personality and Individual Dierences 44 (2008) 12461257 1255

other-evaluative core beliefs for reasons of social desirability cannot be discounted, although this
would seem less likely in an anonymous web-based study. Finally, in our study, there was no evi-
dence that negative core beliefs about others derive from parental care-giving. On the other hand,
positive other-evaluative beliefs were associated with warm and responsive care-giving, particu-
larly by fathers and particularly for males, possibly suggesting that dierent inuences are impor-
tant in the development of positive and negative core beliefs about others.
Our study is the rst to examine associations between parental care-giving, adult attachment
and core beliefs. Our conclusions are limited by the cross-sectional nature of our study, by the
restricted nature of the sample, and by the exclusive use of self-report measures, including one
measure (the Parent Care-giving Style Questionnaire) which is retrospective. We did not record
whether respondents still regarded their parent(s) as primary attachment gures, or whether their
primary attachment gure was now an adult partner. Possibly, the transition to primarily adult
attachment relationships might have had an inuence on core beliefs. Bearing these caveats in
mind however, our ndings are consistent with the proposition that attachment representations,
derived in part from experiences with caregivers and in part from later interpersonal experiences,
may contribute to key core self-evaluative beliefs, particularly in females. It would therefore be
justied to repeat the study with patient samples, and to explore the associations between attach-
ment, core beliefs and symptoms. Our ndings may be important both on a theoretical level for
those developing models of psychopathological processes and also for those engaged in schema-
based therapy.

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