Attachment Style Test: Discover Your Relationship Attachment Pattern
You’ve probably heard the term attachment style, but knowing yours in specific relationships is a different thing entirely. Taking an attachment style test can help you understand and reflect on your patterns.
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Attachment theory, originally developed by John Bowlby and expanded by researchers including Mary Ainsworth, describes the patterns we develop in early life for seeking closeness, comfort, and connection (Bretherton, 1992). These patterns don’t stay in childhood. They travel with us into our adult friendships, romantic partnerships, family relationships, and yes, into therapy too.
Attachment styles shape how we experience intimacy, communication, trust, conflict, and emotional connection in relationships. Whether you tend to feel anxious, avoid closeness, seek reassurance, or build secure connections, understanding your attachment style can offer valuable insight into your relationship patterns.
The good news is that attachment styles aren’t fixed personality traits. They’re relational patterns, which means they can shift, and awareness is often the first step.
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Take an Attachment Style Test: Experiences in Close Relationships – Relationship Structures questionnaire (ECR-RS)
Disclaimer: This attachment style assessment is designed for educational and self-reflective purposes and is based on key concepts from attachment theory and relationship psychology.
The questionnaire below is a shortened version of a well-validated research tool called the Experiences in Close Relationships – Relationship Structures questionnaire (ECR-RS) (Donbaek and Elklit, 2013; Fraley et al., 2011; Rocha et al., 2017). The assessment uses nine statements to give you a picture of how you tend to relate in close relationships.
How to Use the Attachment Assessment
You can complete this assessment with a specific person in mind (for example: a romantic partner, a parent, a close friend) or use it to reflect on your close relationships generally.
For each statement, choose a number from 1 to 7 that reflects how much you agree or disagree:
1 —— 2 —— 3 —— 4 —— 5 —— 6 —— 7
Neutral Agree Disagree
Who are you reflecting on? _____________________________________
Write your number next to each statement, then follow the scoring instructions at the end.
It helps to turn to this person in times of need.
I usually discuss my problems and concerns with this person.
I talk things over with this person.
I find it easy to depend on this person.
I don’t feel comfortable opening up to this person.
I prefer not to show this person how I feel deep down.
I often worry that this person doesn't really care for me.
I’m afraid that this person may abandon me.
I worry that this person won’t care about me as much as I care about them.
How to Score Your Responses
This questionnaire measures two dimensions of attachment: avoidance and anxiety. Together, these give you a picture of your attachment orientation.
Step 1. Reverse score items 1 to 4. For each of your answers to statements 1–4, subtract your score from 8. So if you wrote 2, it becomes 6. If you wrote 5, it becomes 3. And so on.
Step 2. Calculate your Avoidance score. Take your reverse-scored answers for items 1–4, plus your original answers for items 5 and 6. Add all six together and divide by 6. This is your average avoidance score.
Step 3. Calculate your Anxiety score. Add your original answers for items 7, 8, and 9. Divide by 3. This is your average anxiety score.
Avoidance score: ______
Anxiety score: ______
Both scores will fall somewhere between 1 and 7.
What Do the Scores Mean?
Your two scores, avoidance and anxiety, place you somewhere on a map of four attachment orientations. Think of it as a simple grid: avoidance runs along one axis, anxiety along the other.
Low avoidance + Low anxiety = Secure: You tend to feel comfortable with closeness and interdependence. You can rely on others without losing yourself, and you don't spend much energy worrying about whether the relationship is safe.
Low avoidance + High anxiety = Preoccupied: You want closeness and connection deeply, but worry about whether others truly want it too. Relationships can feel consuming, and you may find yourself hypervigilant to signs of withdrawal or rejection.
High avoidance + Low anxiety = Dismissing: You tend to value independence and self-sufficiency, sometimes at the cost of intimacy. Closeness can feel uncomfortable, and you may minimise the importance of relationships or your need for them.
High avoidance + High anxiety = Fearful-Avoidant (Disorganised): You want connection and fear it at the same time. Intimacy can feel both necessary and threatening. This pattern often develops in response to relationships that were themselves a source of pain.
What’s Your Attachment Style?: A Few Important Notes
These scores describe a pattern, not a diagnosis. Attachment styles exist on a spectrum, and most people don’t fall neatly into one category. You may score close to the middle, or find that different relationships bring out different patterns in you.
Attachment is contextual. You might be securely attached in friendship and more anxious in romantic relationships, or vice versa. The ECR-RS was designed with this in mind and can help you examine specific relationships rather than assuming that one style fits all.
If something in your results resonates or unsettles you, that’s worth sitting with. Attachment patterns often make a lot of sense when you understand where they came from. They were, at some point, adaptations: ways of staying safe and close in the relationships that shaped you.
This assessment is based on the ECR-RS (Fraley, R. C., Heffernan, M. E., Vicary, A. M., & Brumbaugh, C. C., 2011. The Experiences in Close Relationships–Relationship Structures questionnaire: A method for assessing attachment orientations across relationships. Psychological Assessment, 23, 615–625). It is offered here for self-reflection and educational purposes, and is not a clinical assessment.
Related Pages
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Working With Attachment Patterns in Therapy
Couples therapy or individual therapy offers a structured space to understand your patterns and begin to change them. If you’d like to explore whether this work is suitable for your situation, I offer a 20-minute initial consultation to discuss whether it feels like a good fit.
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References
Bretherton, I. (1992). The origins of attachment theory: John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth. Developmental Psychology, 28(5), 759–775. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.28.5.759.
Donbaek, D.F. and Elklit, A. (2013). A validation of the Experiences in Close Relationships-Relationship Structures scale (ECR-RS) in adolescents. Attachment & Human Development, 16(1), pp.58–76. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/14616734.2013.850103.
Fraley, R.C. (2015). Relationship Structures (ECR-RS) Questionnaire. [online] Illinois.edu. Available at: https://labs.psychology.illinois.edu/~rcfraley/measures/relstructures.htm.
Fraley, R.C., Heffernan, M.E., Vicary, A.M. and Brumbaugh, C.C. (2011). The experiences in close relationships—Relationship Structures Questionnaire: A method for assessing attachment orientations across relationships. Psychological Assessment, [online] 23(3), pp.615–625. doi:https://doi.org/10.1037/a0022898.
Rocha, G.M.A. da, Peixoto, E.M., Nakano, T. de C., Motta, I.F. da and Wiethaeuper, D. (2017). The Experiences in Close Relationships - Relationship Structures Questionnaire (ECR-RS): validity evidence and reliability. Psico-USF, 22(1), pp.121–132. doi:https://doi.org/10.1590/1413-82712017220111.