Styles of attachment determined by the slovak version of sembu

Abstract

Abstract Introduction: The theory of attachment is widely recognized (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978). This theory is based on four basic types of relationships. The sEMBU questionnaire does not focus on the relationships but parental behavior, however, parental behavior is the presentation of the relationship. Our goal was to determine the types of attachment and to obtain information about secure attachment by using cluster analysis. Methods: sEMBU primarily finds out about three basic patterns used in parental behaviour - rejection, emotional warmth and overprotection. We used the 23-item s(short)-EMBU which previously demonstrated to be satisfactory on the samples of students from Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, Italy, East-Germany, and Sweden (Arrindell et al., 2001). The Slovak translation of the original sEMBU was published in 2007 (Poliaková, Mojžišová, & Hašto, 2007). Since relationships are closely related to rejection, emotional warmth and overprotection, we tried to find behavioral patterns based on Bowlby’s attachment theory. We did not use standard procedures. Using cluster analysis, we also sorted the sample into four groups based on the presupposed attachment styles. Results: Overprotection (father) has the highest share for classification and differentiation in the cluster. Emotional warmth (mother) has the highest share for classification and differentiation in the cluster. We expected to find out that the secure type of attachment prevails over avoidance both in mothers and fathers. Conclusions: Our results surprised us; in the case of mothers, secure attachment did not occur at all. We suggest to continue in the research of the Slovak version of sEMBU focused on the types of attachment, especially on the secure type of attachment.