Do people with different attachment styles differ in terms of descrepancies between what they think love is and what they are experiencing?

Yes, they do differ.

• Passion is a bit tricky because statistically Anxious/Ambivalent folks had higher descrepancies between what they think love should be and what they are experiencing than did Secure folks. Avoidant folks didn't differ from either Secure or Anxious/Ambivalent folks in terms of the difference between what they think love should be and what they are experiencing. (The negative value for Secure folks on passion indicates that they are on average are experiencing more passion than their concept of passion as compared to the Anxious/Ambivalent folks who say they are experiencing less passion than they think theere should be in a relationship.
• Intimacy - Secure folks had less descrepancies between what they think intimacy is and their experience of intimacy than did Avoidant folks, who in turn had less descrepancies between what they think intimacy is and their experience of intimacy than did Anxious/Ambivalent folks.
• Commitment - Secure folks had less descrepancies between what they think commitment is and their experience of commitment than did Avoidant folks, who in turn had less descrepancies between what they think commitment is and their experience of commitment than did Anxious/Ambivalent folks.

Check out the The descrepancies between the Concept Version Item means and the Experience Version item means for each Attachment Style group to see which items had the most impact on these group differences.

Differences between concept and experience - Mean Scores

Love Test Scale Score	Attachment Style
	Secure	Avoidant	Anxious/ Ambivalent	F	p
Passion	*-1.2%	1.30%	* 4.0%	f(2,692)=7.2	= 0.0008
Intimacy	* 5.9%	*9.4%	*15.0%	f(2,692)=20.1	< .0001
Commitment	* .8%	*3.9%	*10.7%	f(2,692)=21.4	< .0001

Return to the Love Test Findings - Attachment Styles Main Page

Return to the Love Test Findings Page.

---