Personality and Individual Differences 72 (2015) 208–213

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Personality and Individual Differences

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid

Attachment anxiety and implicit self-concept of neuroticism:

Associations in women but not men
Uta-Susan Donges a, Anne Jachmann a, Anette Kersting a, Boris Egloff b, Thomas Suslow a,c,⇑
a
Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, University of Leipzig, Semmelweisstr. 10, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
b
Department of Psychology, University of Mainz, Binger Str. 14-16, 55122 Mainz, Germany
c
Department of Psychiatry, University of Münster, A.-Schweitzer-Campus 1, 48149 Münster, Germany

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Previous research has shown that adult attachment-related anxiety is associated with the explicit self-
Received 16 July 2014 concept of neuroticism. It remains to be clarified whether attachment anxiety is related to the implicit
Received in revised form 26 August 2014 self-concept of neuroticism. There is evidence that gender can moderate the strength of correlation
Accepted 28 August 2014
between implicit and explicit measures. The Experiences in Close Relationships scale and the NEO Five-
Available online 29 September 2014
Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) were administered to 106 healthy adults along with an Implicit Association Test
assessing neuroticism. Attachment anxiety correlated with NEO-FFI neuroticism, regardless of gender.
Keywords:
Attachment anxiety was correlated with neuroticism as measured by the IAT in women but not men.
Attachment style
Implicit measure of personality
Results from multiple regression analysis showed that gender was a moderator of the relationship
Neuroticism between attachment anxiety and implicit neuroticism. Our data suggest that in the associative network
Gender of women with high attachment anxiety associative representations of the self are more strongly linked
Implicit Association Test to attributes of neuroticism compared to women with low attachment anxiety.
Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction and can produce a hyper-activation of the attachment behavioral

From the beginning, attachment theory was conceived as a
general theory of human personality development. It was argued
that infants form the internal working models of their selves
mainly through non-verbal interactions with primary caregivers
(Bowlby, 1969). It was one of Bowlby’s key ideas that working
models of self (and others) are stored in the form of mental repre-
sentations. The internal working models were thought to be not
necessarily accessible to consciousness or introspection, as they
become habitual and operate in an automatic fashion (Bretherton
& Munholland, 1999). According to recent models of attachment
organization anxiety and avoidance can be identified as the two
basic dimensions underlying adult attachment (Fraley & Shaver,
2000).
Attachment-related anxiety refers to the extent to which indi-
viduals are vigilant to attachment-related cues. They have fears
of being abandoned and a desire to be close to partners (Fraley &
Shaver, 2000). A long series of frustrating and disappointing inter-
actions with attachment figures erodes reliance on support seeking
⇑ Corresponding author at: Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, University of
Leipzig, Semmelweisstr. 10, 04103 Leipzig, Germany. Tel.: +49 341 97 18891; fax:
+49 341 97 18849.
E-mail address: thomas.suslow@medizin.uni-leipzig.de (T. Suslow).
system leading to anxious or controlling attempts to force partners
to pay more attention and provide better care (Mikulincer &
Shaver, 2009).
In comparison, attachment-related avoidance relates to tenden-
cies to use avoidant versus proximity-seeking strategies to regulate
attachment-related behaviors and thoughts. Avoidant people are
unwilling to rely on others and withdraw from close relationships.
They appear to deactivate their attachment behavioral system
which is associated with a down-regulation of emotions and a
low intensity of emotionality (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2003). Attach-
ment security can be defined as the absence of high levels of anx-
iety and avoidance (Brennan, Clark, & Shaver, 1998). Securely
attached individuals have positive models of others, share feelings
with others and enjoy intimate relationships (Bartholomew &
Shaver, 1998).
Neuroticism is a core dimension of most models of personality
structure (Costa & McCrae, 1995; Eysenck, 1967). It is related to
emotional instability and is defined as the general tendency to
experience negative affective states such as fear, sadness, embar-
rassment, anger, and guilt. However, despite the important role
of neuroticism in personality research, there is no consensus on
its definition among experts (Ormel, Riese, & Rosmalen, 2012).
Widely used personality questionnaires such as the NEO Personal-
ity Inventory – Revised and the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (Costa &

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2014.08.043
0191-8869/Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 U.-S. Donges et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 72 (2015) 208–213
McCrae, 1992) assess anxiety, angry hostility, depression, self-
consciousness, vulnerability, and impulsiveness in the measure-
ment of neuroticism. According to Widiger (2009) there is most
agreement among personality researchers that anxiety–with-
drawal, depression–unhappiness, and vulnerability–stress reaction
belong to the neuroticism domain.
The existing literature on the relation between attachment anx-
iety and the ‘‘Big Five’’ personality traits suggests that attachment-
related anxiety is consistently associated with neuroticism. In
more than 30 studies significant correlations between attachment
anxiety and neuroticism have been found (see Mikulincer &
Shaver, 2007, for an overview). In contrast, for attachment avoid-
ance less significant correlations with neuroticism were observed.
Moreover, the correlations between attachment anxiety and neu-
roticism were generally higher (on average about r = .40) whereas
the correlations between avoidance and neuroticism were on aver-
age only around r = .20. Research on the relation between attach-
ment anxiety and the ‘‘Big Five’’ personality traits shows also
that attachment anxiety is most strongly associated with neuroti-
cism compared to other personality dimensions (e.g., Picardi,
Caroppo, Toni, Bitetti, & Di Maria, 2005).
According to Back, Schmukle, and Egloff (2009) self-reported
personality traits can be conceptualized as reflecting differences
in propositional or conscious representations of the self (e.g., ‘‘I
get stressed out easily’’) that result from the typical functioning
of reflective processes in situations that provoke meaningful differ-
ences in how people act. In the case of neuroticism, these situa-
tions can be described as stressful situations in which people
differentially behave anxiously or do not. Individual differences
in propositional representations of the self could be termed the
explicit self-concept of personality (Back et al., 2009).
In contrast, individual differences in associative representations of
the self have been termed the implicit self-concept of personality
(Asendorpf, Banse, & Mücke, 2002). Associative representations of
the self (e.g., ‘‘me’’–‘‘tense’’) are a product of repeated activation of
the self, as a concept in an associative network, together with patterns
of impulsive behavioral activation and automatic motivational orien-
tations. The implicit self-concept of personality can be measured with
indirect tests such as the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald,
McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). It has been shown that implicit and
explicit self-concept are only moderately associated (Back et al.,
2009) or can even be independent from each other (Steffens &
Schulze-König, 2006). It appears that women manifest stronger asso-
ciations between implicit and explicit measures than men (Egloff &
Schmukle, 2004; Pelham et al., 2005). Women might have greater
insight into their over-learned affect-related associations about
themselves because they are more strongly socialized to be attuned
to their feelings and intuitions than men (Pelham et al., 2005).
The IAT is a word sorting task measuring strength of associa-
tions between concepts by comparing reaction times. IATs assess-
ing neuroticism were found to predict spontaneous strained or
nervous behavior in healthy people above and beyond direct mea-
sures (Back et al., 2009; Egloff & Schmukle, 2002; Schnabel, Banse,
& Asendorpf, 2006; Steffens & Schulze-König, 2006).
In the past, it has been shown repeatedly that self-reported
attachment style is related to spontaneous cognitive or physiolog-
ical reactions. For example, explicit measures of attachment orien-
tation have been shown to be accurate indicators of physiological
arousal during situations of separation (Feeney & Kirkpatrick,
1996) or heightened automatic accessibility of mental representa-
tion of attachment figures (Mikulincer, Gillath, & Shaver, 2002).
According to Mikulincer and Shaver (2007) self-report measures
of attachment style are useful instruments to study implicit
aspects of attachment-system functioning.
The aims of the present study were to investigate for the first
time the relation between (self-reported) attachment anxiety and
209
the implicit self-concept of neuroticism and to study the moderat-
ing role of gender in this association. Adult attachment dimensions
(i.e. anxiety and avoidance) were measured by the Experiences in
Close Relationships scale (ECR; Brennan et al., 1998). An Implicit
Association Test (IAT) was administered to assess participants’
implicit self-concept of neuroticism. The NEO-FFI (Costa &
McCrae, 1992) was applied to measure the explicit self-concept of
neuroticism. Since gender might moderate the association between
explicit and implicit measures as pointed out above correlation
analyses were calculated separately for men and women. It was
hypothesized that women would manifest stronger associations
between attachment anxiety and implicitly measured neuroticism
compared with men. To formally test the moderator effect of gender
we calculated multiple regression analyses. Since depressed mood
and intelligence have been shown to be related to neuroticism we
decided to measure and control these variables in our research con-
text (e.g., DeYoung, 2011; Hirschfeld et al., 1983).
2. Method
2.1. Participants
One-hundred and six healthy subjects (57 women) volunteered
to participate (the age range was between 18 and 38 years). For all
participants, exclusion criteria were a history of neurological or
psychiatric disease, current substance abuse or use of any psycho-
tropic medication. All subjects were white and attested to being
native speakers of German. Participants were recruited via public
notices. Notices with a brief description of the study, the exclusion
criteria and a contact telephone number were posted in several
locations on the campus of the University of Leipzig such as
libraries and canteens. The study was conducted in accordance
with the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the local
University Ethics Committee. More than half of our study partici-
pants (n = 60) were university students (32 women, 28 men). 2
participants (2 women) were high school students. 10 participants
were employees without an academic degree (6 women, 4 men). 5
participants were in vocational education (3 women, 2 men). 23
participants were working academics or academics in further
training measures (13 women, 10 men). 4 participants (4 men)
were unemployed academics. 2 participants had a graduation but
were unemployed and not university students or in vocational
training measures (1 woman, 1 man).
2.2. Psychometric measures
The Experiences in Close Relationships scale (ECR; German
version: Neumann, Rohmann, & Bierhoff, 2007) was applied to
measure attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance. The ECR
consists of 36 items that are rated on a 7-point scale ranging from
1 (not at all like me) to 7 (very much like me). Eighteen items assess
attachment anxiety and 18 items measure attachment avoidance.
Cronbach’s alphas were relatively high for the anxiety and avoid-
ance scales of the ECR (.85 and .88, respectively). Low scores on
both dimensions indicate attachment security.
The NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI; German version:
Borkenau & Ostendorf, 1993) was administered as an explicit mea-
sure of neuroticism. The NEO-FFI assesses five dimensions of the
normal personality, i.e. neuroticism, extraversion, openness to
experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. It presents in
total 60 items (12 items per scale) that participants rate on a
5-point Likert scale (from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree)).
The internal consistency for the neuroticism scale was .88. Depres-
sivity of participants was assessed with the Beck Depression Inven-
tory (BDI; German version: Hautzinger, Bailer, Worall, & Keller,
210 U.-S. Donges et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 72 (2015) 208–213

1995). The internal consistency for the BDI was .76. Verbal intelli- Table 1
gence was measured by the Multiple choice vocabulary test MWT-B Demographic and psychometric characteristics of study participants as a function of
gender (means and SDs (in brackets)).
(Lehrl, Triebig, & Fischer, 1995).
The neuroticism Implicit Association Test (IAT) was administered Variable Women (n = 57) Men (n = 49) t
on a personal computer using the Inquisit program (Draine, 2004). Age (years) 24.5 (4.3) 26.5 (3.7) 2.59*
Stimuli from the categories me (me, my, own, I, self) and others (they, School education (years) 12.2 (0.7) 12.4 (0.9) 1.28
your, them, you, others) as well as items from the categories anxiety Intelligence (MWT-B, IQ score) 111.2 (11.0) 114.3 (11.4) 1.41
Depression (BDI) 7.8 (5.3) 6.9 (4.9) 0.97
(anxious, nervous, fearful, uncertain, afraid) and calmness (calm, Attachment anxiety (ECR) 65.0 (15.3) 62.7 (17.3) 0.71
relaxed, restful, at ease, balanced) were presented. The IAT comprised Attachment avoidance (ECR) 51.8 (17.1) 49.9 (14.4) 0.63
five blocks. In the first block, comprising 20 trials (each item was Neuroticism (IAT, D score) 0.37 (0.36) 0.44 (0.35) 1.02
presented twice), participants practiced discriminating items Neuroticism (NEO-FFI) 33.6 (8.6) 29.9 (7.4) 2.35*
Extraversion (NEO-FFI) 40.8 (6.0) 40.0 (6.7) 0.63
belonging to the category me from those belonging to the category
Openness (NEO-FFI) 44.7 (6.5) 46.2 (5.7) 1.23
others (target discrimination). In Block 2, the same procedure was Agreeableness (NEO-FFI) 44.3 (5.7) 41.8 (5.4) 2.31*
conducted with respect to attribute discrimination; participants Conscientiousness (NEO-FFI) 43.5 (7.1) 40.0 (6.8) 2.57*
were required to sort items into anxiety and calmness categories. *
Significant difference at p < .05 (two-tailed).
The critical Blocks 3 and 5 each consisted of 60 trials. In these trials,
participants categorized items into two combined categories, each
including the attribute and the target concept assigned to the same
the more neurotic the estimated implicit self-concept of a given
key. In Block 3 (me + anxiety block) the categories me and anxiety
participant.
were assigned to the left key, whereas the categories others and
calmness were assigned to the right key. In Block 5 (me + calmness
2.3. Procedure
block), the categories anxiety and calmness switched keys. Attribute
and target stimuli were presented alternately in a randomized order
Testing sessions were conducted in a quiet room free from audi-
for each participant. In Block 4, this switched key assignment of
tory and visual distractions. First, participants completed the ECR.
attribute discrimination was practiced (20 trials).
Then the IAT was conducted. A laptop (Dell Latitude E6510) was
Participants were instructed that they would be required to
used for stimulus presentation and response registration. Then
make a series of category judgments. In each trial, a stimulus word
subjects were given the MWT-B, the BDI, and the NEO-FFI.
was displayed in the center of a computer screen. Category labels
were shown on the left- and right-hand sides of the window. Par-
ticipants used the letter q on the left-hand side of the keyboard and 3. Results
the letter p on the right-hand side for their answers. They were fur-
ther told: ‘‘Please try to be as accurate though also as quick as pos- 3.1. Psychometric measures: comparison between women and men
sible. If your selection is incorrect, you will see a red X. To continue
to the next judgment, you must make the correct selection.’’ To According to t-tests for independent samples women were
facilitate fast responses participants had to keep their index fingers younger than men (see Table 1 for details). However, age was
on the q and p keys throughout the experiment. Intertrial intervals not significantly correlated with attachment anxiety, neuroticism
had a duration of 150 ms. Time between the start of each stimulus (NEO-FFI), or IAT neuroticism (ps > .05). Women did not differ from
presentation and correct responses were recorded. After each block men with respect to education, intelligence, attachment anxiety,
error rates and mean latencies were displayed. attachment avoidance, depression, and neuroticism as measured
IAT scores were calculated by using the D algorithm by the IAT. Women had higher scores on the neuroticism scale of
(Greenwald, Nosek, & Banaji, 2003): (a) trials with reaction times the NEO-FFI than men. Moreover, women showed higher agree-
greater than 10,000 ms were eliminated (in our sample in total ableness and conscientiousness compared with men (see Table 1).
only 9 trials); (b) error trials were included in the analysis by using According to Pearson’s Chi-square (v2(7) = 6.70, p = .46) there was
the latency between stimulus presentation and correct response no relationship between gender and employment status.
(built-in error penalty); (c) mean latency for the critical trials of
the me + anxiety block was subtracted from the mean latency for 3.2. Correlations between psychometric measures in the total sample
the critical trials of the me + calmness block; (d) the IAT effect
was computed by dividing this difference by the individual respon- In Table 2 we present product-moment correlations between the
dent reaction time standard deviation. The higher the IAT D scores ECR, NEO-FFI, IAT, BDI and MWT-B in our sample. ECR attachment

Table 2
Product-moment correlations between psychometric measures in the whole sample.

ECR NEO-FFI
Avoid. IAT N E O A C BDI MWT
Attachment anxiety (ECR) .16 .14 .55** .10 .06 .14 .20° .27* .11
Attachment avoidance 1 .02 .24° .12 .04 .13 .28* .38** .14
Neuroticism (IAT) 1 .03 .11 .04 .05 .01 .04 .00
Neuroticism (NEO-FFI) 1 .44** .09 .17 .25° .54** .12
Extraversion (NEO-FFI) 1 .05 .13 .17 .31** .06
Openness (NEO-FFI) 1 .06 .17 .23° .20°
Agreeableness (NEO-FFI) 1 .23° .29* .06
Conscientiousness (NEO-FFI) 1 .36** .05
Depression (BDI) 1 .09
Intelligence (MWT-B, IQ score) 1
°
p < .05.
*
p < .01.
**
p < .001 (two-tailed).
 U.-S. Donges et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 72 (2015) 208–213 211

anxiety was significantly correlated with NEO-FFI neuroticism but
not with IAT neuroticism. Moreover, attachment anxiety was neg-
atively correlated with conscientiousness (NEO-FFI) and positively
associated with depressivity (BDI).
Attachment avoidance was significantly correlated with NEO-
FFI neuroticism but not with IAT neuroticism in the whole sample.
In addition, attachment avoidance was also negatively correlated
with conscientiousness (NEO-FFI) and positively associated with
depressivity (BDI).
Implicit neuroticism (IAT) was not related to any of the admin-
istered psychometric measures. In contrast, explicit neuroticism
was negatively related to extraversion and conscientiousness
(NEO-FFI) and positively correlated with depressivity.
3.3. Relations of attachment styles with implicit and explicit
neuroticism as a function of gender
In the sample of women ECR attachment anxiety correlated sig-
nificantly with the NEO-FFI neuroticism score (r = .58, p < .001)
and with the IAT neuroticism score (r = .36, p < .01) (see Fig. 1).
Importantly, the correlation between attachment anxiety and IAT
neuroticism remained significant after controlling for NEO-FFI
neuroticism (r = .40, p < .01). For men, ECR attachment anxiety
correlated also significantly with the NEO-FFI neuroticism score
(r = .51, p < .001) but not with IAT neuroticism (r = .09, p = .53).
Using the Fisher r-to-z transformation, we observed a significant dif-
ference between the two correlation coefficients between ECR
attachment anxiety and IAT neuroticism for men and women
(z = 2.3, p = .02 (two-tailed)). IAT neuroticism was not significantly
related to NEO-FFI neuroticism neither for women nor for men
(r = .04 and .20, p > .05, respectively).
In the sample of women attachment avoidance was correlated
with NEO-FFI neuroticism (r = .32, p < .05) but not with IAT neurot-
icism (r = .09, p = .51). Finally, for men attachment avoidance was
neither correlated with NEO-FFI neuroticism (r = .10, p = .49) nor
with IAT neuroticism (r = .09, p = .55).
For men, there was a significant difference between the
correlations of attachment anxiety and avoidance with NEO-FFI
neuroticism (Steigers z = 2.20, p = .03 (two-tailed)). For women, a
marginally significant difference between the correlations of
attachment anxiety and avoidance with NEO-FFI neuroticism was
found (Steigers z = 1.78, p = .08 (two-tailed)). Thus, attachment
anxiety tended to be more strongly associated with explicit neu-
roticism than attachment avoidance.
3.4. Tests for interaction between explicit and implicit neuroticism and
gender in multiple regression analyses
The interaction between implicit (and explicit) neuroticism and
gender in predicting attachment anxiety was formally tested using
hierarchical regression analyses. In the first model, following the
inclusion of explicit neuroticism and gender (Step 1) the interac-
tion of explicit neuroticism with gender was entered into the
regression analysis in Step 2. Explicit neuroticism significantly
explained variations in attachment anxiety. Having higher scores
of explicit neuroticism predicted higher attachment anxiety. No
significant interaction between explicit neuroticism and gender
was found in the prediction of attachment anxiety (see Table 3).
In the second model, after the inclusion of implicit neuroticism
and gender (Step 1) the interaction of implicit neuroticism with
gender was entered (Step 2). Implicit neuroticism and gender did
not predict attachment anxiety but the interaction between impli-
cit neuroticism and gender was significant (see Table 4). This indi-
cates that the association between neuroticism as measured by the
IAT and attachment anxiety differed as a function of gender.
4. Discussion
The objectives of our study were to examine the relation
between attachment anxiety and the implicit self-concept of neu-
roticism and to investigate the moderating role of gender in this
context. Our correlation data suggest that self-reported attachment
anxiety is associated with neuroticism as measured by the IAT in
women but not men. As hypothesized, according to the present
results attachment anxiety is more strongly associated with the
implicit self-concept of neuroticism in women compared with
men. Our results from multiple regression analysis indicate that
gender is a significant moderator of the relationship between
attachment anxiety and implicit neuroticism. It can be concluded
that the association between attachment anxiety and neuroticism
as measured by the IAT differed as a function of gender. For
women, a significant positive correlation of medium size was
observed but for men no significant correlation between attach-
ment anxiety and implicit neuroticism was found.
Table 3
Hierarchical multiple repression analyses with attachment anxiety as the dependent
variable and explicit neuroticism (NEO-FFI) and gender as predictors.
Attachment anxiety DR2
b R2
Step 1
Explicit neuroticism .559* .302 .302*
Gender .056
Step 2
Explicit neuroticism  Gender .141 .303 .001
*
p < .001.

Table 4
Hierarchical multiple repression analyses with attachment anxiety as the dependent
variable and implicit neuroticism (IAT) and gender as predictors.

Attachment anxiety DR2

2
b R
Step 1
Implicit neuroticism .056 .024 .024
Gender .139
Step 2
Implicit neuroticism  Gender .391* .070 .046*
Fig. 1. Scatter plot depicting the correlation between ECR attachment anxiety and
*
IAT neuroticism (D) score (r = .36, p < .01) in the sample of women (n = 57). p < .05.
212 U.-S. Donges et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 72 (2015) 208–213
This means that women with high attachment anxiety differ
from less anxious women in the associative representations of
their selves with regard to neuroticism-related characteristics.
According to our results, in the associative network of women with
high attachment anxiety associative representations of the self are
more strongly linked to attributes of neuroticism such as anxious,
nervous, uncertain, afraid, or fearful compared to women with low
attachment anxiety.
Independently of gender, we observed relatively high positive
correlations between attachment anxiety and the explicit
self-concept of neuroticism. That is, anxiously attached individuals
differed from less anxious persons in their conscious representa-
tion of the self with regard to neuroticism-related characteristics
such as proneness to show anxious, hostile, or depressed reactions.
This finding is consistent with that of many previous studies in the
field (see Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). Moreover, we found evi-
dence that attachment anxiety tended to be more strongly related
to self-reported neuroticism than attachment avoidance which
also replicates previous findings. For example, neuroticism as mea-
sured by the NEO-PI showed significant correlations with attach-
ment anxiety as well as attachment avoidance but correlations
were stronger for attachment anxiety (Davis & Vernon, 2002;
Noftle & Shaver, 2003).
It has been reported previously that women manifest stronger
associations between implicit and explicit measures than men
(e.g., Egloff & Schmukle, 2004). In this context, it was proposed
by Pelham et al. (2005) that women could be more strongly social-
ized to pay attention to their feelings than men so that they might
develop greater insight into the affect-related associations about
themselves. Gschwender, Hoffmann, and Schmitt (2006) argued
that women’s habitual preoccupations could result in an increased
introspective accessibility of their affective response tendencies
and traits. Women could ruminate more on anxiety evoking situa-
tions and anxiety reactions than men. Egloff, Weck, and Schmukle
(2008) showed that thinking about anxiety-arousing situations
enhanced the correlation between implicit and explicit anxiety
measures. Even though we observed a gender specific relation
between explicitly measured attachment anxiety and implicit neu-
roticism we found no correlations between explicitly and implic-
itly measured neuroticism, regardless of gender. Independence of
explicit and implicit personality measures has been reported in
other studies (Steffens & Schulze-König, 2006). However, the latter
finding appears contradictory to the assumption that women man-
ifest associations between implicit and explicit personality mea-
sures. An explanation for the observed pattern of correlation
findings in women (i.e. correlation of implicit neuroticism with
explicit attachment anxiety but not with explicit neuroticism)
could be that the IAT applied in our study assessed primarily the
anxiety facet of neuroticism so that on a phenomenological level
similarity with attachment-related anxiety could be higher than
with the neuroticism construct as measured by the NEO-FFI which
encompasses more facets of neuroticism (e.g., hostility, depression,
and impulsivity).
Our correlational data do not allow us to make any inferences
about the mechanisms underlying the differential association pat-
tern between men and women concerning attachment anxiety
and implicit neuroticism. One possible explanation we have pro-
posed is that women might have greater insight into the affect-
related associations about themselves compared to men. However,
it also possible that differences in private self-consciousness
between male and female study participants underlie the differen-
tial correlation pattern. Private self-consciousness is a tendency to
introspect and examine one’s inner self and feelings (Nystedt &
Ljungberg, 2002; Scheier & Carver, 1977). Individuals with higher
private self-consciousness might develop stronger links between
the associative representations of the self and attributes of neurot-
icism. Another possible explanation which does not exclude the pre-
ceding ones refers to different gender roles regarding the experience
and expression of anxiety and insecurity. The expression of anxiety
appears to be inconsistent with the traditional male gender role
(McLean & Anderson, 2009). High femininity and low masculinity
have been found to be related to elevated fear (Carey, Dusek, &
Spector, 1988). From this perspective, it is possible that men are
more inclined to protect their self-concept from hints that they
could be anxious or insecure compared to women. Against this
background, it seems advisable to administer gender role scales
and measures of private self-consciousness in future studies on
attachment anxiety and implicit or explicit neuroticism.
The main finding of our study is the association of self-reported
attachment anxiety with the implicit self-concept of neuroticism in
women. We administered the IAT as implicit measure of self-
concept which is based on information that is not intentionally
given to inform about the self. Our data indicate that at least in
women associative representations of the self are linked to neurot-
icism-related attributes (i.e. anxious, nervous, or uncertain).
According to Back et al. (2009) chronic associative links between
associative network elements are the result of the typical function-
ing of impulsive processes (i.e. how situational cues are automati-
cally perceived and what behaviors are automatically performed).
Associative representations of the self such as ‘‘me’’–‘‘anxious’’
can be in part the consequence of repeated experiences of unreli-
able and insufficiently responsive attachment figures during child-
hood. Experiences with primary caregivers who are unable to allow
steps towards independence and risk-taking and who are exces-
sively protective of their child could also represent important fac-
tors relevant for the development of anxiety (e.g., Ainsworth,
Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978). Anxious attachment is associated
with exaggeration of threats and life demands and an inability to
cope autonomously with them (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). The
above-mentioned adverse experiences with attachment figures
could lead to associative representations of the self linked to inse-
curity and fearfulness.
Several further limitations of our investigation have to be
acknowledged. Sample consisted only of rather young adults with
rather high intelligence and education. This clearly limits the gen-
eralizability of our findings. Against this background, the present
results are in need of confirmation by future studies performed
on larger, more representative samples. Moreover, in our study
we administered only a self-report or direct psychometric instru-
ment (i.e., the ECR) to assess attachment orientation. It seems
advisable to use indirect measures of attachment style in future
studies on implicit attachment-system functioning such as the
Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; George, Kaplan, & Main, 1985)
or the Adult Attachment Projective (AAP, George & West, 2001).
The AAI is a semi-structured interview for assessing adults’ strate-
gies for identifying, preventing, and protecting the self from dan-
gers tied to intimate relationships. The AAI taps into adult
representation of attachment by assessing general and specific
recollections from their childhood. The interview is coded based
on content and quality of discourse. The AAP is a free-response
psychological assessment of adult attachment consisting of draw-
ings of attachment relevant situations. In its administration projec-
tive and interview methods are combined. Indirect measures such
as the AAI and the AAP appear less susceptible to social desirability
concerns and self-serving biases and depend less on introspective
abilities. It has been repeatedly shown that there is, for example,
only a modest correspondence between self-reports and reports
of significant others and limited insight into problematic aspects
of one’s characteristic patterns of interpersonal relating (e.g.,
Huprich, Bornstein, & Schmitt, 2011; Shedler, Mayman, & Manis,
1993). Thus, it appears of central importance not to rely exclusively
on self-report but to use interview or projective measures to com-
 U.-S. Donges et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 72 (2015) 208–213
plement self-report data in research on attachment. Research
based on the AAI showed that persons employing deactivating
strategies report low attachment anxiety but manifest high physi-
ological arousal (i.e., implicit reactions) when recalling experiences
of separation and rejection (Dozier & Kobak, 1992). Indirect assess-
ment instruments could be useful in revealing relations between
attachment styles and implicit self-concepts.
Acknowledgement
We thank Frank Zeitschel for his help in data acquisition.
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