The interplay of stress and attachment in individuals weathering loss of employment

•We model stressors and attachment security over six months following job loss.•We found evidence for both the stress-effects and stress-generation hypotheses.•More stressors were associated with prospective decreases in attachment security.•Lower attachment security was associated with prospective increases in stressors.•Adult attachment security operates in a dynamic and changing, not fixed, manner.

This study addressed two questions concerning the interplay between adult romantic attachment and exposure to stressful circumstances: do stressful events predict fluctuation in romantic attachment during a period of unemployment, and does attachment measured at one point predict later changes in stressors? Stressors and attachment were measured over a six month period following involuntary job loss for a sample of 426 adults. Autoregressive models found evidence for both the stress-effects and stress-generation hypotheses, with more stressors associated with prospective decreases in attachment, and lower attachment associated with prospective increases in stressors. These findings support a more dynamic formulation of the interplay between attachment and exposure to stressors over the months following job loss.