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What's your
attachment style?
Nine questions, about two minutes. This quiz uses the research-validated ECR-RS to place you on the two dimensions that define adult attachment, and shows you which of the four styles your answers point to. No email, no account, and nothing you enter is saved or sent anywhere.
The two dimensions behind the four styles
Attachment theory describes the patterns we develop for handling closeness, patterns first learned with early caregivers and later replayed in adult romantic relationships. Modern research measures it along two dimensions rather than sorting people into fixed types.
Attachment anxiety is how much you worry about rejection and abandonment, how much you need closeness to feel secure. Attachment avoidance is how uncomfortable you are with closeness and depending on others, how strongly you lean toward self-reliance. Where you fall on these two sliders is what produces the four familiar styles: secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized.
The quiz
Answer each statement based on how you generally are in close relationships, not one specific person or a single bad week. There are no right answers, and 4 (Neutral) is a real option.
Reference
The four attachment styles
Secure
Lower anxiety · Lower avoidance
The most common style, roughly 55–60% of adults
Securely attached people are generally comfortable with closeness and with depending on others, and comfortable being depended on in return. They don't spend much energy scanning for signs a partner is about to leave, and they can usually name what they need and ask for it directly.
Conflict is still uncomfortable, but it doesn't feel like a threat to the whole relationship. A secure person can stay connected across a disagreement, repair after a rupture, and give a partner space without reading it as rejection. This is the pattern most attachment work is trying to help people move toward.
Anxious / Preoccupied
Higher anxiety · Lower avoidance
Roughly 10–20% of adults
People with an anxious or preoccupied style want closeness and are comfortable depending on others, but underneath it runs a persistent worry about being let down or left. Small shifts in a partner's tone, a slow text reply, a quieter mood, can register as evidence that something is wrong.
Reassurance helps, but it can feel like it wears off quickly, which is why the same worry can resurface again and again. The deeper question underneath the behavior is usually "do I actually matter to you?" Attachment work here focuses on self-soothing the alarm and learning to ask for reassurance in ways a partner can meet.
Dismissing-Avoidant
Lower anxiety · Higher avoidance
Roughly 20–25% of adults
People with a dismissing-avoidant style value independence and self-reliance, and tend to handle stress on their own. Getting too close, or leaning on someone, can feel uncomfortable rather than comforting, so the instinct when things get emotionally intense is to create space.
This isn't coldness, and it usually isn't a lack of caring. It's a learned strategy: at some point, needing people felt safer to shut down than to rely on. Attachment work here is less about fixing anxiety and more about slowly making closeness and interdependence feel less threatening.
Fearful-Avoidant (Disorganized)
Higher anxiety · Higher avoidance
The least common style, often estimated under 15% of adults
The fearful-avoidant style holds both pulls at once: the wish for closeness and the fear of it. A fearful-avoidant person may reach for connection and then withdraw the moment it deepens, because intimacy itself has come to feel unsafe.
This pattern is often rooted in relationships where the same person was both a source of comfort and a source of hurt, so the nervous system learned that closeness and danger arrive together. It responds well to trauma-informed and attachment-focused therapy, where the work is building an experience of connection that stays safe.
How this quiz works
The nine statements are the Experiences in Close Relationships–Relationship Structures (ECR-RS), a validated short-form attachment measure. Six items measure avoidance and three measure anxiety; your two dimension scores are averaged onto a 1–7 scale, and the style is simply the quadrant those two scores fall into.
Because attachment is dimensional, a score near the midpoint means the label is looser than it sounds. The quiz is an educational self-assessment. It is not a diagnosis, it does not capture everything about how you relate, and it is not a substitute for working with a therapist.
Measure: Fraley, R. C., Heffernan, M. E., Vicary, A. M., & Brumbaugh, C. C. (2011). The Experiences in Close Relationships–Relationship Structures questionnaire. Model: Brennan, Clark, & Shaver (1998); Bartholomew & Horowitz (1991). Prevalence figures: Mickelson, Kessler, & Shaver (1997); National Comorbidity Survey Replication. My Mental Climb is not affiliated with or endorsed by these authors.
Common questions
- What are the four attachment styles?
- The four adult attachment styles are secure, anxious (preoccupied), dismissing-avoidant, and fearful-avoidant (disorganized). They come from two underlying dimensions: attachment anxiety (how much you fear rejection or abandonment) and attachment avoidance (how uncomfortable you are with closeness and depending on others). Secure is low on both; anxious is high anxiety and low avoidance; dismissing-avoidant is low anxiety and high avoidance; fearful-avoidant is high on both.
- Is this attachment style quiz based on research?
- Yes. This quiz uses the Experiences in Close Relationships-Relationship Structures (ECR-RS) questionnaire, a validated short-form attachment measure developed by R. Chris Fraley and colleagues, scored on the two-dimensional model of attachment anxiety and avoidance from Brennan, Clark, and Shaver (1998) and the four-category framework of Bartholomew and Horowitz (1991). It is an educational self-assessment, not a clinical diagnostic tool.
- What is the most common attachment style?
- Secure attachment is the most common style in the general adult population. Nationally representative U.S. research (Mickelson, Kessler, and Shaver, 1997) found roughly 59% secure, 25% avoidant, and 11% anxious, and the National Comorbidity Survey Replication found about 63% secure. In other words, just over half of adults are securely attached, though rates run lower in younger and college-age samples.
- Can your attachment style change?
- Yes, attachment style can change over time and can differ from one relationship to another. Attachment is not a fixed personality trait but a set of learned expectations about closeness, and consistent experiences of safety, whether in a relationship or in therapy, can move someone toward what researchers call earned secure attachment. This is one of the central hopes of attachment-focused couples and individual therapy.
- Is an attachment style quiz a diagnosis?
- No. An attachment style quiz is an educational snapshot, not a diagnosis or a clinical assessment. Attachment is dimensional rather than a set of fixed boxes, scores near the middle make a category softer, and no short questionnaire can capture the full picture of how you relate. If your results resonate and you want to work with the pattern, that is what therapy is for.
Take it further
Your pattern isn't a life sentence.
Attachment styles are learned, which means they can shift. If your result resonated and you want to understand what it means for the relationship you're in, that's the work our couples and individual therapists do. A free 15-minute phone consult with our intake coordinator is a no-pressure place to start.
Book a free consultTelehealth across California. Related reading: avoidant partners · attachment-focused couples therapy · earned secure attachment