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A Prospective Study on the Association of Parental and Peer Attachment and the General Factor of Personality
Curtis S Dunkel1, Tetsuya Kawamoto2, Dimitri van der Linden3
1Independent Researcher, Macomb, Illinois, USA.
Introduction:
Personality traits covary to form a general factor of personality (GFP). The association of parental and peer attachment across adolescence and into early adulthood with the GFP in early adulthood were examined.
Methods:
Data from the Oregon Youth Study were used in the analyses. Participants (N = 202 males) were administered measures of parental and peer attachment nine times, beginning in 1985, at ages 11-12 through ages 21-22. At ages 23-24 measures of personality and response bias were administered.
Results:
Cross-sectional analyses revealed positive correlations between parental attachment, peer attachment, and the GFP. Additional analyses suggest that the association of the two types of attachment with personality is largely at the level of the GFP and is not explained by response bias. Longitudinal analyses revealed that stable factors across adolescence in both parental and peer attachment accounted for variance in the GFP.
Conclusions:
The associations of parental and peer attachment in adolescence and young adulthood with personality in young adulthood are largely at the level of the GFP and these associations are due to aspects of parental and peer attachment that are time invariant.
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