Personality, attachment, and well-being in adolescents : the independent effect of attachment after controlling for personality

Abstract

Although there is evidence that parental attachment and personality interact during development and exert mutual influences on one another, studies describing how parental attachment and personality dimensions interact in predicting well-being are scarce. Studies that help clarify the shared and unique variance on well-being explained by these two constructs are required, and as such, the objective of the present study was to describe the relationships between personality, attachment, and well-being. A total of 336 adolescents participated in this study (Mage = 15 years; SD = 1.73). Participants completed self-report measures of personality, attachment, and well-being. The present study expands current knowledge in three ways. First, attachment dimensions of communication, trust, and involvement were significant predictors of well-being, even after controlling for age, gender, and personality dimensions. Second, age and gender moderate the associations between parental attachment and cognitive (but not emotional) well-being, reflecting the representations systems, which are culturally and socially construed underlying cognitive well-being. Third, adolescents low in self-directedness and low in persistence are more dependent on their parental attachment to have better well-being. In sum, our results support the idea that parental attachment is one of the most crucial mechanisms for the promotion of well-being because it acts both as a promoter of the development of adolescent socio-cognitive processes (such as self-directedness, which development depends strongly on the parental factors) and as a coping mechanism for those with less adaptive personality characteristics.