Are people single because of attachment style or demographics?
In a large representative German sample, whether someone was single depended far more on income, age and education than on their attachment style.
Source
Is It Attachment Style or Socio-Demography: Singlehood in a Representative Sample
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cross-sectional — Representative household survey (random-route sampling) comparing singles and people in relationships on the Adult Attachment Scale, with ANOVAs and a stepwise logistic regression predicting singlehood.
- N
- N=1676 · Analytic subsample of 1,676 adults aged 18-60 drawn from a representative sample of 2,510 German residents (restricted to reduce the influence of widowhood).
- Population
- Representative sample of the German resident population surveyed in 2012; analyses used adults aged 18-60.
- Outcome
- Relationship status (single vs. in a relationship) and Adult Attachment Scale subscales: comfort with closeness, ability to depend on others, and relationship anxiety.
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What they did
A polling institute surveyed a representative sample of German residents in 2012; the analysis used 1,676 adults aged 18 to 60. Participants reported whether they lived in a relationship and completed the Adult Attachment Scale, which measures comfort with closeness, willingness to depend on others, and anxiety about losing a partner. The authors compared singles and coupled people by gender, age group, education and income, and used a stepwise logistic regression to see how much each set of variables predicted being single.
What they found
Contrary to an earlier small study, single men were not more anxiously attached than women. Attachment differences depended on age: single people aged 18 to 30 were more comfortable with closeness than coupled peers, while singles aged 46 to 60 were less comfortable with closeness and trusted others less, and singles aged 31 to 45 reported more relationship anxiety. Income below 2000 euros a month was linked to a nearly 13-fold higher likelihood of being single. Overall the model explained 41.1% of the variance in relationship status, with attachment scales adding only about 1% on top of socio-demographic variables.
The limits
What it doesn't show
The data are cross-sectional, so the study cannot show whether attachment style leads to singlehood or whether being single (or past break-ups) shapes attachment. It did not record whether people were single by choice, how long they had been single, or their past relationship history, all of which the authors say matter. The attachment questionnaire asks about romantic partners, so singles may look less secure simply because the items fit their situation poorly. Most attachment effects were very small, and several were described by the authors themselves as too small to be relevant despite reaching significance in a large sample.
Key terms
- Attachment style
- A characteristic pattern of expectations and behaviour in close relationships (secure, anxious or avoidant), thought to develop from early caregiving experiences.
- Internal working model
- The mental representation of oneself and others, built from early relationships, that guides expectations in later relationships.
- Representative sample
- A sample whose make-up matches the population on key characteristics, so findings can be generalised to that population.
- Logistic regression
- A statistical model that predicts a yes/no outcome (here single vs. coupled) from several predictors and estimates how each changes the odds.
- Effect size
- A measure of how large a difference or association is, independent of sample size; important in big samples where tiny effects become statistically significant.
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Quiz yourself
What was the strongest single predictor of being single in this sample?
Common questions
Does this mean attachment style doesn't matter for relationships?
Not exactly. Attachment was associated with relationship status in age-specific ways, but once income, age and education were known, attachment added very little to predicting who was single.
Why did the researchers only analyse people up to age 60?
They wanted to reduce the influence of widowhood, since many older people are single because a partner has died rather than for reasons related to attachment or choice.
Why is income such a strong predictor of being single?
The authors suggest that low income may make it harder to support a household or family; but because the data are correlational, being single could also reduce household income rather than the other way round.
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