Social-Cognitive Conceptualization of Attachment Working….pdfVIP

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Copyright 1996by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 1996, Vol. 71, No. 1,94-109 0022-3514/96/$3.00 Social-Cognitive Conceptualization of Attachment Working Models: Availability and Accessibility Effects Mark W. Baldwin, John Patrick Richard Keelan, Beverley Fehr, Vicki Enns, and Evelyn Koh-Rangarajoo University of Winnipeg Attachment working models were conceptualized from the perspective of current social-cognitive theory. In Studies l and 2, most people reported experience with multiple stylesof relating; at the same time, the general attachment style they endorsed was related to (a) the percentage of their significantrelationships fittingdifferent attachment-style descriptions, (b) the ease with which they could generate exemplar relationships matching these descriptions, and (c) their interpersonal ex- pectations in these relationships. In Study 3, priming different types of attachment experiences affected participants attraction to potential dating partners who displayedparticular attachment orientations. These findingssuggestthat most people possess relational schemascorresponding to a range of attachment orientations and that the relative availabilityand accessibilityof this knowledge determine their thinking about relationships. In the years since Hazan and Shavers (1987) seminal work approaches (Baldwin Fehr,