Definition
There is some evidence that men and women have moderately different distributions of insecure adult attachment styles. Generally, men may tend to report higher avoidance and women may tend to report higher ambivalence, but these findings are somewhat inconsistent and controversial.
Introduction
Although controversial, there is some empirical evidence that there may be small to moderate sex differences in adult attachment and that these differences may be first evident during middle childhood. Despite the controversy, I would propose that the suggestion that there may be sex differences in attachment should not be surprising. It is well accepted that women and men tend to be socialized differently from birth (Bem 1993) and, as a result, men are typically less emotional and less nurturing than women. Furthermore, there is support that women and men may perceive social interactions differently and consequently behave differently in their relationships. Despite the proposal...
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Scharfe, E. (2016). Sex Differences in Attachment. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3592-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3592-1
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