The better attachment style quizzes are reasonably accurate, because they borrow from research questionnaires that score attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance on two separate scales. At Love Answers, we read the studies behind the advice and say how strong the evidence is, and the ECR-R scales are public domain for non-commercial research, though commercial use requires permission. Most online quizzes do not report any validation, though, so you cannot tell how close their scores come to that research measure.
That questionnaire is the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised (ECR-R), a 36-item measure published by Fraley, Waller and Brennan in 2000. Even a quiz modeled on the ECR-R gives you a snapshot of how you answered on one day. It does not diagnose you or assign you a type for life.
Your result can also move with the relationship you picture while answering and with your mood that day. Taking the same quiz twice, a few weeks apart, gives you two results to compare instead of one.
How Accurate Attachment Style Quizzes Are
An attachment style quiz is only as accurate as the questionnaire it borrows from, and the better quizzes borrow from research scales like the ECR-R. According to R. Chris Fraley’s ECR-R page at the University of Illinois, the ECR-R splits its 36 items into two 18-item scales, one for attachment anxiety and one for attachment avoidance. Security on the ECR-R means scoring low on both scales.
A quiz that follows this design reports two scores, so you can see whether your anxiety, your avoidance or both are high. A quiz that hands you a single type label with no scores hides where you sit on each scale.
Even a quiz built on the two scales has limits:
- It shows one day. Your result reflects how you answered today, and your answers can shift with your mood and the relationship you had in mind.
- It measures self-report. You are rating yourself, so the score shows how you see your own habits in relationships.
- It may be untested. Most online quizzes do not report any validation, so you cannot compare their scores with a research scale.
Our verdict is that a two-scale quiz is a reasonable starting point for reflection. No quiz, including ours, can diagnose you or assign you a type for life.
How Researchers Measure Adult Attachment
Researchers have measured adult attachment in two ways: by sorting people into categories and by scoring them on two scales. The table lists three measures from the history of this research and what each one produces.
| Measure | Approach | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Hazan and Shaver (1987) | People described themselves as one of three styles | Secure, avoidant or anxious/ambivalent |
| Bartholomew and Horowitz (1991) | A view of self combined with a view of others | Secure, preoccupied, dismissing or fearful |
| ECR-R, Fraley, Waller and Brennan (2000) | 36 items on two 18-item scales | An anxiety score and an avoidance score |
Hazan and Shaver’s 1987 study was the first to apply attachment theory to adult romantic love. In their newspaper-survey sample of 620 respondents, roughly half (about 56%) described themselves as secure, about 25% as avoidant and about 19% as anxious/ambivalent. A student sample in the same Hazan and Shaver paper showed a similar split of 56, 23 and 20 percent.
The 56/25/19 split comes from one 1987 sample, so it does not tell you how common each style is among adults today. The study that first applied attachment theory to adult romantic love rested on people describing themselves. An online quiz asks you to do the same thing.
Bartholomew and Horowitz (1991), in a paper indexed on PubMed, proposed four categories: secure, preoccupied, dismissing and fearful. Each category combines a positive or negative view of yourself with a positive or negative view of others, and two views with two options each give four combinations. You will often see the labels “dismissing-avoidant” and “fearful-avoidant” for the same categories.
The ECR-R scores two scales instead of assigning a category. A category system has to put you in one box or another.
Signs of a Better Attachment Style Quiz
A better attachment style quiz names the research scale it draws on, scores you on two dimensions, shows your result without an email wall and states its limits. Use this table to sort any quiz you find.
| What to check | Stronger quiz | Weaker quiz |
|---|---|---|
| Source | Names a published scale such as the ECR-R | Names no research |
| Scoring | Separate anxiety and avoidance scores | One type label only |
| Access | Result shows on screen | Asks for your email before the result |
| Limits | Says the result is a snapshot and does not diagnose | Presents the type as fixed fact |
| Verdict | Fine as a reflection prompt | Skip it or read it loosely |
A named scale lets you read the research yourself. If a quiz cites the ECR-R, Fraley’s ECR-R page shows the two scales the quiz claims to follow. Fraley states that the ECR-R scales are public domain for non-commercial research but that commercial use requires permission, so a quiz on a site that earns money should not copy the full item set without that permission.
An email wall means you hand over contact details before you see any result. A result that shows on screen lets you retake the quiz as often as you like. Retaking the quiz shows you whether your scores hold steady.
Why Your Attachment Quiz Result Can Change
Your attachment quiz result can change from one sitting to the next because your answers depend on the relationship you picture and the mood you are in. If you take a quiz the night after an argument, the same questions may read differently than they would during a calm week. Picturing your current partner, an ex or relationships in general can also give you different scores.
Before you start, pick one relationship to answer about and write it down. Answer about that same relationship every time you retake the quiz. A change in your scores is then less likely to come from a change in what you pictured.
Patterns can also shift over longer stretches of life. The idea of “earned security” is associated with a 1994 study by Pearson, Cohn, Cowan and Cowan in Development and Psychopathology. Earned security describes adults who report difficult early relationships with their parents but show a currently secure, coherent state of mind on the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI).
Earned security is evidence that attachment patterns can change, though the research gives no timeline for it. The AAI is an interview, so earned security was identified with a different tool than a self-scored online quiz.
What an Attachment Quiz Cannot Tell You
An attachment quiz cannot diagnose you, name your partner’s style or explain where your pattern came from. Keep these four gaps in mind before you share a result or act on it.
- A diagnosis. A result describes how you answered questions about relationships. If you are struggling with your mental health, a licensed therapist can assess what a quiz cannot.
- Your partner’s style. Your answers are about you. Answering a quiz on your partner’s behalf only records your guess about them, so invite them to take it themselves if they want to.
- A fixed type. A result covers one sitting. Two sittings a few weeks apart give you a better sense of your range.
- The cause. A quiz score does not show what shaped it. Earned security also shows that a hard start with parents does not settle an adult’s pattern for good.
How to Read Our Attachment Style Quiz Result
Our attachment style quiz asks 24 questions and scores you on attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance, the two dimensions the ECR-R measures. Our quiz is shorter than the 36-item ECR-R, and we do not report validation data for it. Read your result as a prompt for reflection, the same way you would read any quiz.
Look at each score on its own before you look at any summary label:
- Low anxiety and low avoidance. This sits closest to how the ECR-R defines security. Our guide to secure attachment describes that pattern.
- Higher anxiety. Read our guide to anxious attachment and mark which descriptions fit you.
- Higher avoidance. Read our guide to avoidant attachment and mark the descriptions the same way.
- Both higher. Start with the anxious and avoidant guides, then read our guide to disorganized attachment.
How to Use a Quiz Result Well
A quiz result is most useful when it starts questions about your habits in relationships. Five steps keep a result in that role:
- Note the setup. Write down the date, your mood and the relationship you pictured.
- Check the fit. Read the guide for your higher score and mark the lines that sound like you and the lines that do not.
- Retake the quiz. Take the same quiz again in a few weeks with the same relationship in mind, then compare the two sets of scores.
- Talk about it. If you share your result with your partner, ask a question instead of announcing a type: “This quiz says I score high on anxiety. Does that match what you see?”
- Get support if you need it. If worry or pulling away takes up much of your day, a licensed therapist can go further than any quiz.
When a Quiz Is the Wrong Tool
An attachment quiz is the wrong tool when you want it to make a decision or settle an argument for you. Skip the quiz if you hope a score will tell you whether to stay in a relationship. Skip it too if you plan to use your result, or a guessed result for your partner, to win a fight.
If a partner uses a quiz label against you, for example calling you “too anxious” to justify going through your phone or deciding who you see, treat that as controlling behavior. The National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788) and love is respect (1-866-331-9474, or text LOVEIS to 22522) can help you think it through. If you are thinking about harming yourself, call or text 988, and call 911 in an emergency.
Our answer would change for a specific quiz that publishes how its scores line up with a research scale such as the ECR-R. Until a quiz reports that, read its result as a snapshot of the day you took it. To see how accurate attachment style quizzes are for you, take the attachment style quiz today, write down the relationship you pictured, and retake it in a few weeks.