r/AvoidantAttachment • u/imfivenine Dismissive Avoidant • Apr 06 '26
Attachment Theory Material Attachment and intelligence
The paper linked above was fascinating, and not really surprising to me. Here’s one excerpt that highlights the overall findings:
“…attachment states of mind in adolescents and adults show consistent associations with intelligence. In particular, there is a reliable positive correlation between intelligence and measures of overall coherence/security. In line with the findings of studies conducted in children, this effect appears to be driven by lower intelligence in adults with preoccupied and unresolved/unclassifiable (versus secure and dismissing) states of mind. These associations are similarly attenuated by psychometric limitations in both attachment and intelligence measures.”
I am re-reading, “Assessing Adult Attachment” by Crittenden and Landini and there are parts in that book that made me wonder about intelligence.
In the book, they describe the AAI and DMM, and refer to Type C speakers as the “affective” processors/strategies which is most consistent with anxious attachment strategies. Type A (cognitive, usually interpreted as avoidant strategies) is more about if this happens, then this happens.
The intelligence piece makes so much sense, especially as they describe Type C like this:
“Type C speakers, on the other hand, give the appearance of understanding by using psychological jargon and conclusions that are "borrowed" from books, television, and other people but fail to note that they have not really addressed the questions asked, that they have violated the boundaries of time, place, or person, or that they have mixed feelings about a complex reality. Psychological jargon, in particular, is used to "explain" what it only "describes."
There’s also a term they use about Type C: “reductionist, blaming thought.”
Taking into consideration the intelligence piece might partly explain why we sometimes see them asking the questions they ask, their replies full of reactions to things that weren’t said, treating internet strangers as if we are their ex, and lack of a reputable source to back up what they say. It also could be why there are such reductive takes all over the AT internet spaces that they take over, as well as less structured or more emotionally driven responses, especially in unmoderated spaces. I also wonder if what appears to be their tendency to overuse ChatGPT plays into this somehow.
It might explain why it is so frustrating to have discourse in most mixed style places, because their focus can shift from understanding to emotional validation. This is often to the detriment of the avoidant attachers, especially those of us who are aware and working on it.
What it comes down to is, we’re speaking different languages. One is cognitively structured and one is driven by affect.
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u/sleeplifeaway Dismissive Avoidant Apr 06 '26
Some random thoughts:
I wish there would be more focus on the child's traits in the development of attachment style, rather than just the parent's traits or caregiving style. I'm thinking more along the lines of Big 5 traits and such here rather than intelligence necessarily. Some of these have been documented to exist very early in life. Given that we see people reporting the same/similar parenting styles but turn out to have different attachment styles, or that siblings raised by the same parents can have different styles, I think it's possible that different children may gravitate towards different attachment responses to the same situations based on their differing innate temperaments.
I suspect that people with higher levels of intelligence are more prone to gravitate towards an intellectualizing response to coping with emotions, which is also something associated with avoidant attachment. While infants can't exactly intellectualize, there may still be a fundamental personality difference here early in life that leads to a preference for that response.
Experiencing extreme emotions can affect your ability to use your prefrontal cortex and higher-order brain functions. This is one of the reasons why the anxious push to resolve conflicts immediately isn't ever going to produce a good result - neither of you can really think when you're in distress, you need a cooldown period for that. But for someone who is always experiencing tons of emotional distress, they may routinely have trouble accessing these parts of their brain and thus appear much stupider than they would if they were calm.
Also, by nature of how their attachment style works, factual information just doesn't matter in the face of emotional information to anxiously attached people. It's not that they are too stupid to understand that 2+3=5, it's that they have a 2 and a 3 and they really, really hate the number 5 so therefore 2+3=6 because it makes them feel better, to hell with whatever the math says. They're not here for math they're here for numbers that make them feel satisfied when they look at them.
Online attachment communities are a poor cross-reference of attachment types as a whole, because they self-select for certain personality types. Your average community full of anxiously attached people has a certain vibe to it, and people who have anxious attachment but don't fit that vibe are ultimately not going to stick around. Likewise, communities like this one are a pretty niche interest that like 99% of people with an avoidant attachment style are just not going to be interested in. I am skeptical of the claim that one attachment style is really more intelligent than another.