Attachment styles at work: measurement, collegial relationships, and burnout

Abstract

Although the potential deleterious effects of negative social interactions at work have been well established in the literature, the impact of personal factors in forming work relationships has been relatively neglected. Therefore, using a survey of 1624 Canadian healthcare providers, we examined the extent to which attachment styles at work were associated with the quality of social relationships. We found support for a new measure of attachment styles at work that differentiated between anxiety and avoidance attachment. Avoidance was negatively correlated with positive social constructs (civility, psychological safety, and trust) and with the efficacy dimension of burnout. Overall, compared to attachment avoidance, attachment anxiety was more strongly correlated with experienced and instigated workplace incivility, exhaustion, and cynicism. Attachment avoidance was negatively correlated with positive social constructs (civility, psychological safety, and trust) and with the efficacy dimension of burnout. Adding these two attachment dimensions to a model of burnout as a function of workload, value congruence, and coworker incivility significantly improved its fit. This study suggests that employees with high attachment anxiety tend to be more closely involved in work relationships and processes, but this closeness comes at a cost in that they experience more strain when participating in social encounters.