Journal of Health Psychology 0(0) 1 –10 © The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permission:

hpq.sagepub.com Attachment theory, originally developed by Bowlby (1969), posits that individuals are greatly impacted by the child–caregiver rela-tionship established in the first few years of life. The emotional bond formed between child and caregiver serves as an “internal working model”—a schema that the individual will use throughout life for expectations in intimate relationships (Bowlby, 1969). Individual differ-ences in relationship expectations and behavior patterns depict one’s attachment style, a stable set of characteristics, which in turn are linked to a variety of social and psychological factors including affect regulation, social interactions, and coping mechanisms (Maunder and Hunter