Each month our editorial team sifts through hundreds of papers and curates notable findings—for practitioners and informed readers who want to stay current with the evidence. Subscribe to the monthly Research Digest for expert analysis and concise summaries of key papers.
This review looked at 13 studies of attachment in people with borderline personality disorder (BPD) or BPD traits. Every study found a strong link between BPD and insecure attachment. The insecure types most often seen were labeled unresolved, preoccupied, and fearful. The authors note that differences in how attachment was…
Attachment theory, described about 40 years ago, explains stable ways people form close bonds. This review sums up brain imaging and cognitive studies that link adult attachment styles (secure, avoidant, anxious, resolved/unresolved) to how people feel about and think about others. It proposes that attachment style shapes quick judgments of…
Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples (EFT) is a brief evidence-based couple therapy based in attachment theory. Since the development of EFT, efficacy and effectiveness research has accumulated to address a range of couple concerns. EFT meets or exceeds the guidelines for classification as an evidence-based couple therapy outlined for couple…
Researchers ran eight studies to test whether people with an avoidant attachment style (people who feel uncomfortable with closeness) are more likely to be interested in other romantic partners and to be unfaithful. Across the studies, people high in avoidant attachment had more permissive attitudes about infidelity, paid more attention…
Researchers studied 85 married couples (170 people) to see if worries about close relationships (attachment anxiety) link to stress hormones and immune cells. People with higher attachment anxiety had higher saliva cortisol across three days and lower counts of several T-cell types in blood. The study is observational, mostly white…
This review explains attachment theory and temperament and how they relate to parenting. It says infants need close, responsive relationships with caregivers. Parents who respond quickly and appropriately tend to raise securely attached children. Secure attachment is linked with more curiosity, self-reliance, and independence in childhood and often with greater…
This paper reviews couple therapy in the 2020s. It says couple therapy has become a main way to help couples and is grounded in strong research from studies of couple therapy and relational science. The review reports that couple therapy is widely accepted for reducing relationship distress and improving relationship…
This systematic review looked at 37 studies (2,006 people) that used gold-standard interviews to measure adult attachment and objective tests of emotion regulation. It found a clear link between a person’s attachment representation and how they regulate emotions. People with secure attachment showed balanced emotion regulation. Insecure or unresolved attachment…
This study surveyed 393 Italian adults aged 18–62 (219 in stable close relationships and 174 singles) to see how adult attachment styles relate to psychological well-being. People in stable relationships reported higher well-being than singles. Singles were more likely to show attachment traits such as discomfort with closeness, treating relationships…
This study examined 227 married or cohabiting adults who scored below the midpoint on a marital satisfaction measure (putting them at higher risk for depression). Women were more likely than men to report discovering a partner had an affair in the past 12 months. Finding an affair was linked with…
This pilot randomized study tested Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy as a treatment for depression in college women. Thirty-seven female college students were randomly assigned to IFS or to treatment as usual (CBT or IPT). Both groups showed declines in depressive symptoms, and there were no significant differences in how…
Researchers surveyed 92 couples about imagined sexual and emotional cheating. They used statistical models and found that how much people saw the cheating as a threat to the relationship was the strongest factor linked to saying they would break up. Forgiveness partly explained that link for both types of infidelity.…
