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While prior work suggests social and environmental changes can alter attachment anxiety and avoidance across the lifespan, life events often show only modest or transient influences. Using a large sample (N=1943), the study tested links between attachment dimensions and how participants judged 20 hypothetical events across nine event-perception dimensions, including emotional significance, impact, control, unpredictability, and expected personality change.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/attachment-related-perceptions-of-life-events/445102/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/attachment-related-perceptions-of-life-events/445102.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"LangkahRina","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-01","2026-09-29",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":8},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"How were attachment orientations and life event perceptions connected in this study?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"The study examined associations between attachment anxiety/avoidance and participants’ perceptions of whether hypothetical life events would engender personality changes and how events differed across multiple dimensions.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"What did high attachment anxiety participants perceive about life events?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"Participants high in attachment anxiety viewed life events as more challenging, impactful, emotionally significant, unpredictable, negative, and more likely to alter their worldview and social status.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"How did high attachment avoidance participants perceive the potential effects of life events?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"Participants high in attachment avoidance minimized the potential effects of life events, judging them as less significant and less likely to alter personality.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},445102,1790816111,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":8,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":46,"language":139,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":140,"faqs":141,"seo_title":142,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":143,"read_time":31},962090893776,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_155a257f0dc6eb9ab79c44ca47cae57d","OPEN ACCESS  \nCitation: Gibson LC, Chopik WJ (2026) Attachment-related perceptions of life events. PLoS One 21(1): e0340082. [https://doi](https://doi). org/10.1371/journal.pone.0340082  \nEditor: Tobias Otterbring, University of Agder: Universitetet i Agder, NORWAY  \nReceived: July 8, 2025  \nAccepted: December 16, 2025  \nPublished: January 6, 2026  \nPeer Review History: PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process; therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. The editorial history of this article is available here: [https://doi.org/10.1371/journal](https://doi.org/10.1371/journal). pone.0340082  \nCopyright: © 2026 Gibson, Chopik. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.  \nRESEARCH ARTICLE  \nAttachment-related perceptions of life events Logan C. Gibson, William J. Chopik*  \nDepartment of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, United States of America * [chopikwi@msu.edu](chopikwi@msu.edu)  \nAbstract  \nThis study explored how attachment orientations are associated with perceptions of life events. Although there is evidence that life and relationship contexts have the potential to alter attachment anxiety and avoidance across the lifespan, life events often exert only modest or transient effects on attachment orientations. The current study (N = 1943; Mage = 19.61; 74.1% women) examined associations between attachment orientations, perceptions of whether life events might engender personality changes, and perceptions of 20 hypothetical life events across nine dimensions  \n(e.g. , emotional significance, impact, control) . Individuals high in attachment anxiety perceived life events as more challenging, impactful, emotionally significant, unpredictable, negative, and likely to alter their worldview and negatively affect their social status—viewing them as likely to induce personality changes. Conversely, individuals high in attachment avoidance minimized life events’ potential effects, perceiving them as less significant and less likely to alter personality. Future research could further examine whether attachment orientations shift in response to life events according to perceived event characteristics.  \nIntroduction  \nThere has been a great deal of public attention and theorizing about whether people’s attachment orientations—their characteristic approach to relationships—changeover time and across the lifespan [ 1–3] . Although there is a general consensus that attachment-related changes are initiated by changes in social and environmental circumstances [4–6], formal examinations of how life events in particular change a person’s attachment orientation have found relatively underwhelming support for this idea. In other words, only a few life events are associated with changes in attachment orientations, and when they are, they have only temporary and relatively small effects [7] . However, one promising advancement for trying to understand why life events do or don’t change psychological characteristics is the development of taxonomies explaining people’s perceptions of life events [8 ,9] . But the degree to which individual differences in attachment are associated with a broad array of perceptions of life events is relatively unexplored. The current study examined attachment-related  \nPLOS One | [https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0340082](https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0340082) January 6, 2026 1 / 20  \nData availability statement: All data, syntax, and materials files are available from the Open Science Framework (DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/ EBG86); also see [https://osf.io/ebg86](https://osf.io/ebg86) .  \nFunding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.  \nCompeting interests: T","cbCaiguBAVEIkyzH","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaiguBAVEIkyzH","pdf",1064671,"English","# Abstract\n## Introduction\n## Attachment orientation and life event perceptions","[{\"question\":\"How were attachment orientations and life event perceptions connected in this study?\",\"answer\":\"The study examined associations between attachment anxiety/avoidance and participants’ perceptions of whether hypothetical life events would engender personality changes and how events differed across multiple dimensions.\"},{\"question\":\"What did high attachment anxiety participants perceive about life events?\",\"answer\":\"Participants high in attachment anxiety viewed life events as more challenging, impactful, emotionally significant, unpredictable, negative, and more likely to alter their worldview and social status.\"},{\"question\":\"How did high attachment avoidance participants perceive the potential effects of life events?\",\"answer\":\"Participants high in attachment avoidance minimized the potential effects of life events, judging them as less significant and less likely to alter personality.\"}]","Attachment-related perceptions of life events | PDF",1790710303]