Personality and Individual Differences 87 (2015) 3944

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Personality and Individual Differences

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid

Childless adults with higher secure attachment state have stronger

parenting motivation
Gang Cheng a,b,c, Dajun Zhang a,b,, Yizhuo Sun a, Yuncheng Jia a,b, Na Ta a,b
a
b
c

School of Psychology, Southwest University, 400715 Chongqing, China

Center for Mental Health Education, Southwest University, 400715 Chongqing, China
School of Educational Science, Guizhou Normal University, 550001 Guiyang, China

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 18 May 2015
Received in revised form 3 July 2015
Accepted 4 July 2015
Available online 28 July 2015
Keywords:
Adult security attachment state
Parenting motivation
Infant faces
Reward
Liking
Wanting

a b s t r a c t
This study aimed to systematically examine the coherence in the motivation of parenting with the security
attachment state of adults. A total of 228 childless participants (126 men, 102 women) rst completed a selfreport questionnaire including the State Adult Attachment Measure scale and the Interest in Infants questionnaire.
They were then administered three laboratory-based tasks: a) liking, which measured the specic hedonic
experience to infants' neutral faces; b) representational responding (actively seeking infants' neutral faces); and
c) evoked responding (actively retaining images of infants' neutral faces). The results revealed that after controlling
for gender, anxiety, and avoidance, security attachment state was associated with higher levels of interest in infants,
assessed via verbal measures, and associated with liking and wanting (divided into representational and evoked
responding) for infants' neutral faces. Moreover, infant faces elicited pleasure but not the sense of dominance
or wanting in individuals with high avoidance attachment state. These results suggest that improving security
attachment state may enhance motivation for parenting and improve the quality of parental caregiving.
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Attachment is a lifetime construct that guides thoughts, feelings, and
behaviors in relationships across the life span (Bowlby, 1979). Although
Bowlby focused mainly on attachment in infancy, he also proposed that
the cognitive representations of early relationships serve as templates
for future relationships (Bowlby, 1969). Following this view, many
researchers in recent decades have investigated the links between
adult attachment and parenting. Their results show that, regardless of
data collection method (interview-based measures or self-report questionnaires), a secure attachment state was consistently related to more
positive parenting outcomes, and insecurity to negative parenting outcomes (Jones, Cassidy, & Shaver, 2015; Van IJzendoorn, 1995).
Parents' own attachment can inuence the quality of parental caregiving, which is believed to be derived by internal working models
(IWMs) of relationships. IWMs are formed by early attachment experiences and serve as templates for current and future relationships
(Bretherton & Munholland, 2008). If an infant received sensitive and
responsive care from an attachment gure, he/she would likely form representations of the self as worthy of love and care, and the belief that the
attachment gure can be relied on in times of need. These representations
then continue to inuence thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in their
relationships with their own children (Johnson et al., 2010).
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: Zhangdj@swu.edu.cn (D. Zhang).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2015.07.004
0191-8869/ 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Several studies have suggested that IWMs play a crucial role in the
formation of parentchild relationships. Studies related to parenting
motivation found that insecure attachment is related to less desire
to have children among non-parents (Nathanson & Manohar, 2012;
Rholes, Simpson, & Blakely, 1995; Rholes, Simpson, Blakely, Lanigan, &
Allen, 1997; Scharf & Mayseless, 2011) and prenatal couples (Rholes,
Simpson, & Friedman, 2006). Moreover, the lack of desire to have
children is considered a predictor of potential problems in parent
child relationships (Rholes et al., 1997). Neurobiological studies of
attachment behaviors also found differences in maternal brain and oxytocin response to infant cues between different maternal attachment
styles groups (Strathearn, Fonagy, Amico, & Montague, 2009).
The above results indicate that individuals with secure attachment
styles have stronger motivation for parenting, and the variety of motivation may contribute signicantly to the intergenerational transmission of attachment. However, there are some limitations in the extant
literature.
First, many researchers have suggested that attachment style is
likely to be inuenced or shaped by major life events (especially
those pertaining to close relationships) and diverse contextual factors,
and these temporary uctuations can lead to meaningful behaviors
(Cozzarelli, Karafa, Collins, & Tagler, 2003; Davila & Sargent, 2003;
Gillath & Shaver, 2007; Kirkpatrick & Hazan, 1994). However, these studies still considered attachment style to be relatively stable; therefore, such
conclusions could explain only the relationship between the stable dispositions of attachment and the motivation of parenting. Although studies

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G. Cheng et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 87 (2015) 3944

have found that new parents and new lovers activate greater brain
reactivity than romantically unattached singles when faced with
infant stimuli (Weisman, Feldman, & Goldstein, 2012), no study
has directly veried whether attachment state could inuence the
motivation for parenting.
Second, the aforementioned studies used mainly self-report methods
(Nathanson & Manohar, 2012; Rholes et al., 1997; Rholes et al., 2006;
Scharf & Mayseless, 2011), which are vulnerable to the common method
bias and social desirability. Thus, the correlation between attachment
style and parenting motivation could be overestimated. Furthermore,
Lorenz (1943) argued that infantile features are highly biologically relevant stimuli for members of a species, indicating that human beings have
an evolved perceptual bias to nd infantile features attractive. Indeed,
pictures of infants are a type of hedonic stimuli, which were consistently
preferred by children and adults (Charles, Alexander, & Saenz, 2013;
Fullard & Reiling, 1976; Parsons, Young, Kumari, Stein, & Kringelbach,
2011). Moreover, responses to visual tests that used images of infants
as stimuli were found to be different from those of verbal tests that
used texts as stimuli (Maestripieri & Pelka, 2002). Thus, there is a need
to assess interest in infants with non-verbal assessments, such as
through behavioral paradigms.
Third, researchers have found that individuals with secure attachment styles have stronger motivations for parenting. However, whether
these differences inuence behavior is still unknown. Recent progress in
neurobiology regarding the understanding of the subcomponents
underlying the evaluation of hedonic stimuli have suggested that reward
has multiple components; brain systems underlying wanting (the motivation to engage a set of effortful behavioral responses to obtain a desirable
reward) are distinct from those underlying liking (the degree to which
a reward is experienced as pleasurable on consumption) (Berridge &
Robinson, 2003). Moreover, studies have shown that the motivational
salience of infant faces is reected not only in conscious appraisal but
also through behavioral response (Charles et al., 2013; Parsons et al.,
2011). To our knowledge, no study has examined whether the viewing
of infant faces inuences the behavior of individuals with secure
attachment.
To better understand the inuence of attachment to motivation for
parenting, we rst veried whether attachment state could predict
the motivation for parenting using verbal tests. Then, following the
paradigm used by Heerey and Gold (2007), we used neutral infant
and adult faces to obtain behavioral measures of liking and wanting; making key presses to stimuli that one would like to see again or to avoid are
operationalized as wanting. During the wanting trials, key-press performed after stimulus presentation was termed as representational
responding, while that performed to prolong or reduce exposure to a perceptually available stimulus was termed evoked responding. Finally, selfreport on the hedonic value (perceived pleasantness) of each stimulus
was dened as liking.
In the present study, we sought to systematically examine coherence between motivation for parenting and adult security attachment
state. We preliminarily explored the following hypotheses:
1: Secure attachment state in adults is positively correlated with selfreported parenting motivation.
2: Secure attachment state in adults is positively correlated with liking
and wanting (divided into representational and evoked responding)
toward infants, tested by behavioral responses to visual presentations.
3: The correlation between secure attachment state and parenting motivation is lower in the visual test than the verbal test.
2. Method
2.1. Participants
To ensure comparability with previous studies (Nathanson &
Manohar, 2012; Rholes et al., 1997; Scharf & Mayseless, 2011), we

recruited 228 participants (126 men, 102 women) at Chongqing University of Science and Technology. Participants were unmarried and
childless and aged 1828 years (M = 19.22, SD = 1.68). The majority
(over 94%) of the sample was of Han ethnicity. Participation was anonymous and participants were compensated 20 yuan. This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of our university (No. 2014179).
2.2. Measures
2.2.1. State adult attachment measure (SAAM)
The SAAM (Gillath, Hart, Noftle, & Stockdale, 2009) is a 21-item selfreport measure for individual differences on temporary uctuations in
the sense of attachment. It contains three reliable subscales measuring
state levels of attachment-related anxiety, avoidance, and security.
Items are rated on a 7-point Likert-type scale, ranging from 1 (strongly
disagree) to 7 (strongly agree), with 4 (neutral/mixed) as the midpoint
of the scale. This study used the Chinese version of the SAAM, which
was translated and revised by Ma et al. (2012) and has been shown to
have excellent psychometric properties. The psychometric data ranges
of the three subscales were anxiety, 535; avoidance, 749; and security,
963.
2.2.2. Interest in infants
Interest in Infants (Maestripieri & Pelka, 2002) is a 10-item measure
revised by Charles et al. (2013) and demonstrated to be reliable and
valid. In the present study, the Chinese version of Interest in Infants
(obtained via back-translation) was employed. The questionnaire is If
you were at a party and there was a baby in the room that you did not
know, what would you most likely do?. Then, ten different types of
interactions are listed (e.g., avoid the baby entirely). Participants had
to indicate the likelihood of their engaging in each of the listed activity
on a 6-point scale from 1 (not at all likely) to 6 (very likely). Items indicating avoidance of the infant were reverse-coded, and the total score
was calculated by summing the scores for each item, with positive
scores reecting high interest in infants.
2.2.3. Computerized display
The experimental procedures using the computer to evaluate the
wanting and liking components of the motivational system for
participants were divided into three parts (see Fig. 1). The task
was programmed using E-prime stimulus presentation software.
In the rst part, participants viewed and rated 16 slides, each containing sets of three photos from the Chinese Infant Affective Face Picture
System (Cheng, Zhang, Guan, & Chen, 2015) or the Chinese Affective
Face Picture System (Gong, Huang, Wang, & Luo, 2011). Eight neutral
infant, four neutral adult male, and four neutral adult female slides
made up the set. All images were presented in grayscale and matched
for size and luminosity. Each slide contained three images that were
similar in facial expression intensity; the infant stimuli did not differ
from the adult stimuli in intensity (t(46) = 0.75, p = .46). Participants
were asked to assess the degree to which each slide was experienced as
pleasant, arousing, and dominant using the Self-Assessment Manikin,
an affective rating system devised by Lang, Bradley, and Cuthbert
(1999). In this system, a graphic gure depicting values along each of
the 3 dimensions on a continuously varying scale is used to indicate emotional reactions. Participants rated the degree to which each slide was
experienced as pleasurable, arousing, and dominant using 9-point Likert
scales anchored by 1 (extremely unpleasant/calm/dominated) and 9
(extremely pleasant/arousing/in control). This part was considered to
require little effortful behavior, thereby serving mainly as a measure of
hedonic experience (liking).
In the second part, wanting or representational responding was
measured after the assessment of each slide. Before the assessment procedure, participants were informed that they would later view a
slideshow containing some of the slides they had rated. If they wanted
to see a slide again, they could rapidly press the n and m keys, and

G. Cheng et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 87 (2015) 3944

A) Self-reported liking and representational responding

Do you want to see
this slide again
later?

Response Window
2 seconds

41

Screen blank
2 seconds
before new slide
presented for rating

Screen blank
3 seconds
Response Window
Unlimited time

Representational
Responding

How Dominant?
Response Window
Unlimited time

How Arousing?
Self-Reported
Liking

Response Window
Unlimited time

How Pleasant?
Screen blank
3 seconds
B) Evoked responding
Response Window
5 seconds participant
adjustment to maximum
time of 10 seconds

Evoked
Responding

Fig. 1. Study procedure. A: The self-report and representational responding measures were interleaved such that participants rated the pleasant, arousal experienced, and dominance of
each slide and were then given the opportunity to respond for future exposure to the slide. A new slide was presented for rating 2 s after the representational responding condition
concluded. B: Participants' responses served to either prolong or decrease viewing time for the image being rated.

the more presses they made, the more likely it would be seen again. For
those slides that they did not want to see, they could rapidly press the
x and z keys. Participants were instructed to make key presses to
only slides that were motivationally salient and to not respond to slides
with low signicance. During this procedure, the slides were not visible.
The last part measured the evoked responding (consummatory
behavior), which is motivated behavior in the presence of a stimulus.
Twelve of the previously viewed slides (six infant, three adult male,
and three adult female) were presented to participants. Participants
could increase viewing time by repeatedly pressing the n and m
keys, or decrease viewing time by pressing the x and z keys. If
there was no key press, the slides were presented for 5 s; the maximum
time participants were able to view the slides was 10 s. As above, participants were not required to respond to the stimuli, but they were told
that pressing would not alter the total task length.
2.3. Procedure
Upon arrival, participants were briey given preliminary information
about the study, and signed a written consent form. Subsequently, they
completed the packet of questionnaires, which contained demographic

information, the SAAM, and Interest in Infants questionnaire. Thereafter,

participants were guided into the laboratory to complete the computer
test. The whole process took 4045 min. Participants were fully
debriefed at the end of the session.
2.4. Data and analysis
Due to an error in the test program, data from one male participant
were not recorded. Moreover, two participants (one male and one
female) did not make any key presses during this procedure. Thus,
data from a total of 225 (124 men, 101 women) participants entered
the nal analysis.
In the present study, we used responses to adult faces as baseline,
differences between the response to infant and adult faces to determine
liking, and representational and evoked responding to represent the
special motivational value to infants.
The average score per slide for infant stimulation on pleasure, arousal, and dominance minus the corresponding score for adult stimulation
represented the special score for liking, arousal, and dominance to
infants. For the special representational responding, we rst created a
variable indicating net interest in each category of images. The total

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G. Cheng et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 87 (2015) 3944

multiple regression ndings in Table 2 indicate that after controlling for

gender, anxiety, and avoidance, security accounted for more variance
in the verbal test (R 2 Interest = 0.098) than in the visual test
(R 2 Pleasure = 0.064; R2 Representational = 0.050; R2 Evoked =
0.048), supporting Hypothesis 3. Moreover, as adult security state
attachment was entered in the second step, there were no signicant
main effects of anxiety, but avoidance was signicantly and positively
correlated with liking, similar to the results of the preliminary analyses.

number of presses to seek desirable images within a category was

subtracted from the total number of presses to avoid undesirable
images within a category. Consequently, the special representational
responding to infants was represented using the net interest for infants
minus the net interest for adults. The calculation for the special evoked
responding to infants is similar to that of special representational
responding.
Finally, hierarchical regression analysis was used to examine the
unique contributions of the security state attachment of adults in
predicting the motivation for parenting. As some previous studies
found conicting results regarding gender differences in the motivational salience of infant faces (Charles et al., 2013; Parsons et al., 2011), we
entered gender in the rst step. In order to control the effects of anxiety
and avoidance state attachment, we also entered these variables in the
rst step. Next, we entered security state attachment of adults in the
second step.

4. Discussion
According to attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969, 1982), attachment
and caregiving behavioral systems are innately equipped for human
beings, because being emotionally attached to caregivers and providing
care for offspring or dependent individuals during evolution can enhance
genetic success or inclusive tness. Beyond explaining the complementary nature of attachment and caregiving behavioral systems, Bowlby
(1969/1982) suggested that the two systems may interact within the
mind of a potential support provider. Consistent with this view, several
studies have found that caregiving behavioral systems can be interfered
with, suppressed, or overridden by, attachment insecurity (Feeney &
Collins, 2001; Mikulincer, Shaver, Gillath, & Nitzberg, 2005). Specic to
parenting motivation, secure attachment has also been found to be
related to desire to have children (Nathanson & Manohar, 2012;
Rholes et al., 1997; Rholes et al., 2006).
We primarily aimed to examine whether adult security attachment
state could predict various facets of parenting motivation. Overall, the
ndings were in line with those of previous studies (Rholes et al., 1995;
Rholes et al., 1997; Scharf & Mayseless, 2011). After controlling for gender, anxiety, and avoidance, adult security state attachment was associated with higher levels of self-reported interest in infants and consistently
associated with self-reported liking and wanting (divided into representational and evoked responding) for infants.
The present study is the rst to verify whether self-reported adult
security attachment state is related to positive responses to infant
faces. It also showed that, compared to adult faces when viewing images
of infant faces, individuals with high secure attachment state showed
more positive motivational behaviors. The results of this study are consistent with studies showing greater activation of brain reward regions
and higher peripheral oxytocin levels (Strathearn et al., 2009) when
individuals with secure attachment view infant faces.
Our study demonstrates that self-reported measures tend to overestimate the correlation between attachment and parenting motivation
compared to behavioral tests. We believe that there are two explanations for this phenomenon. First, the common method bias may lead
to higher correlations when self-report measures are used. Second,
humans have a natural attraction to infant faces, and this attraction

3. Results
3.1. Preliminary analyses
Table 1 shows that infant faces scored higher on liking, and representational and evoked responding, and these indicators were positively
associated with a secure attachment state, supporting Hypotheses 1 and
2. Moreover, women scored signicantly higher in the three dimensions
of adult attachment state (t(223) = 3.23, p b .01 for security;
t(223) = 2.62, p b .01 for anxiety; and t(223) = 2.38, p b .05 for
avoidance) and verbal interest in infants (t(223) = 2.16, p b .05), but
there are no gender differences in liking and wanting toward infants.
Table 1 also indicates that anxiety was positively correlated with
security and avoidance, while security and avoidance were negatively
correlated with each other. This pattern of correlation is comparable
to that in a previous study using the Chinese version of the SAAM in a
similar sample (Ma et al., 2012). Furthermore, indicators of parenting
motivation were weakly correlated with anxiety, but these trends were
roughly similar to security. Finally, although avoidance was negatively
correlated with security, avoidance was signicantly and positively
correlated with liking, which was unexpected.
3.2. Hierarchical regression
Table 2 summarizes the hierarchical multiple regression results.
While controlling for gender, anxiety, and avoidance, security consistently
accounted for the most variance in indicators of parenting motivation,
and the regression coefcient was only marginally signicant for arousal
( = 0.130, p = .075); the rest were signicant. The overall pattern of relationships generally supported Hypotheses 1 and 2. Specically, the

Table 1
Descriptive statistics and correlations.
1
1. Gender
2. Security
3. Anxiety
4. Avoidance
5. Interest
6. Liking
7. Arousal
8. Dominance
9. Representational
10. Evoked
M
SD

.211
.173
.158
.145
.069
.067
.107
.085
.037

Gender: male = 0, female = 1.

p b .05.
p b .01.
p b .001.

.291
.156
.285
.179
.163
.151
.192
.146
48.884
7.615

.192
.181
.140
.138
.114
.089
.145
21.302
6.147

.009
.142
.002
.117
.081
.118
19.858
6.837

.165
.128
.139
.112
.127
40.564
8.874

.704
.802
.580
.549

.754
.532
.464

.560
.530

1.991
1.598

1.889
1.542

1.760
1.761

10

.580
137.218
101.537

196.333
160.093

G. Cheng et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 87 (2015) 3944

43

Table 2
Summary of hierarchical regression analyses.
Model

Gender
Anxiety
Avoidance
Security
R2
R2

Representational

Evoked

Step 1

Interest
Step 2

Step 1

Step 2

Step 1

Step 2

Step 1

Step 2

Step 1

Step 2

Step 1

Step 2

.125
.171
.062

.080
.098
.002
.240
.098
.048

.032
.112
.116

.006
.054
.163
.190
.064
.030

.049
.136
.032

.023
.096
.000
.130
.036
.014

.079
.083
.089

.050
.038
.126
.149
.047
.018

.065
.066
.058

.025
.005
.107
.202
.050
.034

.000
.127
.093

.029
.082
.130
.149
.048
.018

.050

Liking

.034

Arousal

.022

Dominance

.028

.016

.029

Note: Standardized regression coefcients are reported.

Gender: male = 0, female = 1.
p b .05.
p b .01.

has evolved to enhance motivation to engage in caregiving behavior

(Lorenz, 1943; Parsons et al., 2011). Therefore, hedonic reactions to
infant faces in the behavioral test should suppress the correlation
between attachment and parenting motivation. Thus, researchers
should go beyond self-reports of parenting motivation and include
physiological and behavioral indices in future studies.
An important and unanticipated nding of our study relates to adult
avoidance attachment state. Although the avoidance attachment state is
negatively correlated with the secure attachment state, the two states
were positively correlated with the pleasure experienced when viewing
infant faces. The positive correlation remained even after controlling for
the contributions of gender and anxiety attachment state in the regression analysis. However, the signicant effect of avoidance became nonsignicant in other indices. In contrast, the regressions conducted on
interest, dominance, and representational and evoked responding
yielded a signicant effect of security, and a marginally signicant effect
of arousal. This means, whether security or avoidance attachment state
increases, the pleasure aroused by infant faces will be both improved,
but that the sense of dominance and motivational behaviors increase
only with an increase in secure attachment.
Based on this result, we think, as many researchers have found
(Losoya & Eisenberg, 2001; Mikulincer et al., 2005), that high secure
attachment state can activate positive models of the self, which may
lead to a sense of control and condence in one's ability to address
others' suffering, and allow people to feel comfortable with intimacy
and interdependence. The survival of the offspring is a primary function
of caregiving; thus, persons with high secure attachment state will have
stronger liking and wanting toward infant faces. This explanation corresponds with the observation that individuals with high secure attachment states show higher compassion and altruistic behavior when
responding to the needs of dependent others (Mikulincer et al., 2005).
Moreover, an avoidance attachment state involves a detached attitude
toward others; thus, persons with high avoidance attachment state
feel uncomfortable with intimacy and interdependence. Therefore,
compared with adult faces, infant faces, which have a special hedonic
value and pose no interpersonal threat, can arouse stronger pleasure
in persons with high avoidance attachment state. However, due to the
lack of a sense of control and condence, the elicitation of pleasure
does not increase the sense of dominance or wanting behaviors in
individuals with high avoidance attachment states. This explanation is
consistent with ndings from neurobiological studies, which found
that the reward components of the evaluations of hedonic stimuli can
be divided into liking and wanting (Berridge & Robinson, 2003;
Heerey & Gold, 2007). This means that, in neuroendocrine systems, increases in secure or avoidance attachment states could increase the liking component, but only increases in secure attachment state can
increase the wanting component.
This study provides useful new information about the associations of
adult attachment state with various facets of parenting motivation. The
ndings suggest that, when viewing infant faces, only an increased
secured attachment state is associated with increase in liking and

wanting. This means that improving people's secure attachment state

could help to enhance the motivation for parenting, thereby facilitating
the intergenerational transmission of secure attachment.
Although our results contribute to a better understanding of the
association between adult attachment state and parenting motivation,
our study has several methodological limitations. First, although the
SAAM has been shown to have high validity and utility, and could measure both generalized and momentary attachment (Gillath et al., 2009),
we could not eliminate the inuence of the dispositions of attachment.
Therefore, future studies should test whether increases in security
(accomplished through both implicit and explicit priming techniques)
could foster parenting motivation. Second, although the behavioral
paradigm used in this study has been used in many previous studies
to effectively distinguish between liking and wanting, which have a
corresponding neurobiological basis (Aharon et al., 2001; Berridge &
Robinson, 2003; Heerey & Gold, 2007), our inferences that changes in
parenting motivation and attachment state are accompanied by corresponding changes on neurobiology are nevertheless indirect evidence.
Therefore, these inferences should be conrmed using brain imaging
techniques. Finally, the sample included only college-aged and unmarried childless participants, who might not be strongly interested in becoming parents in the near future. Considering that previous studies
have found variations in interest toward infants across the life span
(Maestripieri & Pelka, 2002), future researchers should consider using
participants at different points in the life span.

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