Is Attachment Genetic Or Environmental? The Latest Research
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All right, team. Welcome back to the Man Talk Show. Connor Beaton here. And today we're going to be diving into the latest research on attachment and digging into the question, is your attachment style genetic or

or is it environmentally affected? So does your family system really only play a role in affecting your attachment style or do your genetics also play a role into it? So wonderful piece of research that's just come out. They leveraged the data from the Minnesota Twins Study, Twins Registry. It's the largest registry or sample of older adult twins.

And this looks at roughly 1,377 twins, which is pretty wild. It's a pretty big study. And what they were looking for was participants reporting on both their general attachment style and their relationship-specific attachments to their mothers, to their fathers, to their partners, and to their best friends.

And the results were really interesting. They suggested that your attachment style is partly heritable. So it's partly a genetic component, roughly 36%.

is partly heritable, meaning if you have parents that are more avoidant, then you're likely to inherit a more avoidant attachment style. And it's partly attributed to the environmental factors that are not shared. And this specifically was looking at environmental factors not shared between the twins.

And that was roughly 64%. And so heritability estimates were somewhat higher for the parent-specific attachment styles, roughly 51%.

So what that means is that if you grew up in a household where, again, you had a predominant attachment style within your parents, like if they were both avoidant, it's much more likely that you will inherit that attachment style. Oh, and the last piece about this, because this is, you know, there's many different parts to this research and study, but the last piece to this that was really fascinating was that a

avoidance is more hereditary than anxiety, than anxious attachment. I thought this was really interesting. What the research was indicating, and again, this is, you know, it's not 100% confirmed, this research, but what it was indicating is that avoidant attachment style is more hereditary

An anxious attachment style is more environmental. So if you're somebody that really struggles with avoidant attachment style, that's likely something, there's a higher likelihood that that is genetic in its predisposition. So it's something that you inherited genetically.

And, you know, I can kind of see this in my family line. I was an avoidant attachment person. I've talked about this quite a bit. And that is something that I can see through my family lineage. And that's something that I can see that wasn't just environmental. That was something that is, you know, sort of baked into certain parts of my family. But that was kind of fascinating that, and I think this is a question that I get a lot from individuals is,

Do you have just one attachment style? And the answer is no. Generally speaking, different relationships are going to activate different parts of your attachment style. So you can be in a relationship with somebody and be a little bit more anxious, and you can be in another relationship with somebody else and be a bit more avoidant, and you can be in another relationship and be a bit more secure. So different things, different environments, different markers are going to get activated just depending on the style of relationship that you're in and the person that you're dating.

But the beauty of this research is it shows a clear demarcation between avoidance and anxious, and that avoidance is something that's more heritable, and that anxious is something that is more environmentally induced, I guess we could call it.

The other thing that was really interesting is this notion that some of your attachment style is pre-verbal, meaning, and maybe not some, but a good amount of your attachment style is pre-verbal, meaning that a lot of this attachment orientation within you is developed before you have the language as an infant to communicate.

So it's something that is sort of baked into your nervous system and your neurology and your body. And so this is why working with attachment styles can be very interesting, can be challenging sometimes, but you can also have some pretty radical shifts within people quite quickly when they start to realize that it's not just a

a mental framework, right? It's not just a cognitive way of relating to somebody. It's actually a nervous system orientation, right? So for example, if you're a man or a woman who is a little bit more avoidant,

Yes, there might be things in your upbringing that have contributed to that, but there might be things that were pre-verbal that happened very early on in life that you don't have language to put around. You don't have a like, oh, this thing happened when I was eight.

And that's why I'm avoidant, right? It's more like your body naturally responds, right? So your partner might get upset or angry and they're expressing their disappointment in you. And you just naturally, your body just starts to shut down. It's not like your brain is saying, I don't like this. I want to check out. Your body just starts to shut down entirely.

And you disconnect from the conversation. You pull away from engaging in the relationship. And that can be a natural nervous system response because of things that you experienced before you have any memory

and before you had any language to put around it. And it also might be something that you inherited through your parents. So this is fascinating. Again, I just want to emphasize one final piece. Heritability and having an attachment style be more genetic does not mean that it's a death sentence, right? It doesn't mean that you're stuck with that type of attachment style forever. You can still work

to lean into connectivity, maintaining relationship. You know, for example,

I was a very avoidant attachment style for a very long time, but I have worked pretty diligently and now have a very secure attachment with my wife. So all of that's to say, don't interpret it being genetic as it being unfixable or irreversible. I think sometimes when people hear like, oh, that's genetic, it means that they're stuck that way. That is not the case. It simply means that

your nervous system, your orientation is geared towards one way, but you can maneuver your orientation towards something more secure, more healthy in terms of attachment. You can work towards that. It is doable, possible, and it's not a massive lifelong battle. So I don't want to make it sound like you're screwed. So more to come on that front.

There's many videos that I've put out in terms of how do you move from avoidant to secure? How do you move from anxious to secure? So if you want to dive into those topics, then definitely check out my channel. Don't forget to man this video forward and share it with somebody that you think would enjoy it, that might geek out on some of this research. And I'll have the link to the research in the show notes. Until next week, Conor Beaton signing off.

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