An Expectancy-Value Approach to Attachment

Attachment working models provide the cognitive structure by which individuals seek to satisfy attachment-relevant goals. In this chapter, we examine working models, drawing on social cognitive principles and an expectancy-value framework of motivation to better understand the normative processes involved in the formation and maintenance of adult attachment. Specifically, we consider the cognitive dynamics of working models by examining attachment scripts, consisting of outcome expectancies and associated strategies as represented in associative networks, and showing spreading activation dynamics that reveal implicit expectancies. We also highlight work on general versus relationship-specific models, and how this work informs our understanding of attachment stability and change, as well as what it reveals about normative processes. Our discussion of value focuses on the subjective value an individual attaches to attachment-related communal goals, and how such valuing interacts with expectancies to influence communal goal striving. We highlight several recent studies involving heightened valuing of interpersonal connection via situational factors (e.g., the presence of an available partner) as well as biological factors (e.g., manipulation of the neurohormone oxytocin), and examine how such activation influences, and is influenced by, expectancies to impact such fundamental attachment-related processes as willingness to initiate a relationship, or persevere in the face of interpersonal uncertainty. We conclude by considering alternative ways in which expectancies and value may interact to impact attachment dynamics and discuss directions for future work.