Ambivalent Attachment Style, Death Awareness, and Love Styles in Adults

Abstract

The current research study aims to discover how ambivalent attachment style, death awareness, and love style in people with different demographic characteristics are related to each other. The sample comprised 93 participants, of whom 27 were men and 66 were women (M = 35). 61. SD = 13. 82). The study suggested a gap between agape and mania love in individuals with highly ambivalent attachment styles when the manipulation of mortality salience, death reflection, and control group are considered. In addition, the researcher proposed that individuals with high and low ambivalent attachment styles might have different love styles from each other. Death awareness is most probably to mediate the association between ambivalent attachment style and love styles. The measurements used in this study were the Adult Attachment Questionnaire (AAQ) by Simpson et al. (1996), the Love Attitude Scale (LAS) by Hendrick and Hendrick (1986), and the Death Awareness scenarios. The data revealed that highly ambivalent individuals did not differ in their love styles from the control and mortality salience groups. However, highly ambivalent people displayed lower love after-death reflection than individuals from the control group. A higher ambivalent attachment style in the control group increases the probability of mania and agape love. The main conclusion of the study demonstrated that a higher level of ambivalent attachment style was related to a lower level of agape love when individuals experienced death reflection and mortality salience.