Anxious-Ambivalent Attachment

Anxious-ambivalent attachment, also called anxious-resistant attachment, is one of the insecure infant attachment patterns identified by the developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth through her Strange Situation laboratory procedure in the 1970s, in which an infant shows intense distress when a caregiver leaves the room but then responds to the caregiver's return with a conflicted mixture of seeking closeness and angrily resisting or pushing away the very comfort being offered, making the infant unusually difficult to soothe even once the caregiver is back. Ainsworth and later researchers linked this pattern to caregiving that has been inconsistent or unpredictable, such as a caregiver who is warm and responsive at some times but unavailable, intrusive, or slow to respond at others, leaving the infant uncertain whether comfort and attention will reliably be available and prompting the infant to escalate distress signals to try to secure attention. Infants with this attachment pattern also tend to show heightened wariness of unfamiliar people and situations and to explore an unfamiliar environment less freely than securely attached infants, staying closer to the caregiver even before any separation occurs. In the influential adult-attachment research that later extended Ainsworth's infant categories into adulthood, this same underlying pattern is generally associated with what researchers describe as an anxious or preoccupied adult attachment style, characterized by a strong desire for closeness in relationships paired with persistent worry about a partner's availability and commitment.