The contribution of attachment security/insecurity and self-esteem to identity formation in late adolescence

This study examined the contribution of attachment security/insecurity and self-esteem to identity formation. A convenience sample of 120 volunteer university students, 106 women and 14 men, aged between 18-25 years, participated in this study. The Extended Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status-Two, (EOMEIS -2), (Adams, Bennion & Huh, 1989) was used to measure the participants' identity status, the Adult Attachment Scale (AAS) (Collins and Read, 1990) to measure attachment styles and the Self-Liking Self-Competence Scale (SLSC) (Tafarodi and Swann, 1995) to measure self - esteem. A Hierarchical Multiple Regression analysis showed that the three attachment subscales, Secure, Ambivalent and Avoidant, together contributed significantly to the variance in all the identity statuses except for Achievement. Contrary to what was expected the Avoidant subscale made a significant independent contribution to the variance in Achievement status scores and the Ambivalent subscale made a significant independent contribution to the variance in Moratorium status scores. A Hierarchical Multiple Regression analysis showed that the two self-esteem subscales together contributed significantly only to the variance in Achievement status scores. Independently Self-Liking was found to contribute positively to the variance in Achievement scores and Self-Competence was found to contribute negatively to the variance in the Diffusion scores. These results were discussed in relation to theories of attachment and identity formation.