Attachment anxiety and avoidance and the big five personality traits: their relationship to self-esteem

Graduation Date

2013

Document Type

Thesis

Program

Other

Program

Thesis (M.A.)--Humboldt State University, Psychology: Counseling, 2013

Committee Chair Name

Lizabeth Eckerd

Committee Chair Affiliation

HSU Faculty or Staff

Keywords

Attachment, Social desirability, Adult attachment, Big five personality, Humboldt State University -- Theses -- Psychology, Personality, Self-esteem

Abstract

Self-esteem broadly impacts each individual's life and often underlies common issues brought into the psychotherapeutic setting (Baumeister, Campbell, Krueger, Vohs, 2003). Self-esteem is an important construct with regard to the general wellbeing of an individual and it has been found to be associated with things like level of success and mental health (Baumeister et al., 2003; Rosenberg, Schooler, Schoenbach, Rosenberg, 1995). Some broadband predictors of self-esteem are personality and attachment cognitions (Robins, Tracy, Trzesniewski, 2001; Wu, 2009). Although many studies have considered them separately, no study to date has combined both attachment and Big Five personality with regard to their collective predictability of self-esteem. The present study fills in this research gap. The study's findings with regard to these three concepts are particularly relevant to the therapeutic setting, as its main question is whether personality (a more stable construct) or attachment (a more malleable construct) more strongly relates to self-esteem. Most of this study's hypotheses were supported and fell in line with past research. As expected, attachment anxiety and avoidance were both found to be positively correlated with neuroticism, and as predicted, this relationship was even stronger for anxiety. Attachment avoidance was negatively correlated with extraversion,agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Attachment anxiety and avoidance were both negatively correlated with self-esteem, the negative relationship found for avoidance and self-esteem did not replicate results from past research. With regard to personality and self-esteem; extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness were positively correlated, but neuroticism was negatively correlated. Through the use of multiple hierarchical regressions it was found that overall personality is a greater predictor of self-esteem than is attachment. The leading predictors of self-esteem, from the eight predictors used in this study, were first neuroticism, followed by attachment anxiety, conscientiousness, and then extraversion. Knowing more about these contributors to self-esteem may help therapists to gather relevant information about their clients and may help them in understanding what could be helpful to focus on in therapy, especially if clients are dealing with self-esteem issues

https://scholarworks.calstate.edu/concern/theses/s4655j87d

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