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Contents
- Abstract
- Attachment and Exploration
- Love and Work
- Hypotheses
- Hypothesis 1
- Hypothesis 2
- Hypothesis 3
- Study 1
- Method
- Subjects
- Measures and procedure
- Results and Discussion
- Attachment type
- Sex differences
- Feelings about work
- Leisure activities
- Well-being
- Study 2
- Method
- Subjects
- Measures and procedure
- Results and Discussion
- The secure orientation to work
- The anxious/ambivalent orientation to work
- The avoidant orientation to work
- Discriminant analyses
- Summary and comments
- General Discussion
Figures and Tables
Abstract
The possibility that love and work in adulthood are functionally similar to attachment and exploration in infancy and early childhood was investigated. Key components of attachment theory—developed by Bowlby, Ainsworth, and others to explain the role of attachment in exploratory behavior—were translated into terms appropriate to adult love and work. The translation centered on the 3 major types of infant attachment and exploration identified by Ainsworth: secure, anxious/ambivalent, and avoidant. Two questionnaire studies indicated that relations between adult attachment type and work orientation are similar to attachment/exploration dynamics in infancy and early childhood, suggesting that the dynamics may be similar across the life span. Implications for research on the link between love and work are discussed, as are measurement problems and other issues related to future tests of an attachment-theoretical approach to the study of adults.
Tolstoy, in a letter to Valerya Aresenyev, November 9, 1856, said, “One can live magnificently in this world if one knows how to work and how to love…” (Troyat, 1967, p. 158). Freud is purported to have said that the goal of psychotherapy is to allow the patient to love and to work (Erikson, 1963). The themes of love and work are central to some of the most influential theories of psychological well-being (e.g., Erikson, 1963; Maslow, 1954; Rogers, 1961); their importance for healthy functioning has been empirically documented (e.g., Baruch, Barnett, & Rivers, 1983; Gurin, Veroff, & Feld, 1960; Lee & Kanungo, 1984; Vaillant, 1977). Study after study has shown that satisfaction in one domain is associated with satisfaction in the other. But how are love and work related? What is the nature of the connection?