Quick answer
In the 1987 newspaper sample, 19 percent chose the anxious/ambivalent paragraph. Their relationships averaged 4.86 years, against 10.02 years in the secure group, and the item is not a diagnosis.
In the Rocky Mountain News sample that Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver reported in 1987, 110 readers, 19 percent, chose the anxious/ambivalent description of love. The paper is "Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The item those 110 people checked was a single paragraph, not a clinical interview.
What did that 19 percent actually check?
The wording was: "I find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I often worry that my partner doesn't really love me or won't want to stay with me. I want to merge completely with another person, and this desire sometimes scares people away."
Read it as three claims the respondent had to accept together. First, other people do not want as much closeness as the respondent wants. The reluctance is placed on "others," not on a lack of interest in closeness. Second, worry is frequent and specific: the partner doesn't really love me, or won't want to stay. Third, the wished-for remedy is extreme closeness, "merge completely," and that wish itself is described as something that can scare people off. The paragraph already contains a loop. The desire for union is part of the same item as the fear that the desire drives people away.
You cannot split those sentences when you use this study. The style item forces several issues into one choice. A person who worries about being left, but who does not want to merge, still had to take or leave the whole paragraph. The 19 percent figure is the share who checked this package. It is not a pure measure of jealousy or of sexual attraction, even though those experiences showed up later in the results.
The other two options were a secure paragraph about comfort with closeness and dependence, and an avoidant paragraph about discomfort, distrust, and partners who want more intimacy than feels comfortable. Secure was N=319, 56 percent. Avoidant was N=145, 25 percent. Twenty-one people skipped the item. Twenty-five checked more than one. The 19 percent sits beside those choices, not in a vacuum.
How long did those relationships last?
Mean reported length was 4.86 years for the anxious/ambivalent group and 10.02 years for the secure group. Avoidant respondents fell in between, at 5.97 years. Average age in all three groups was 36. The shorter mean in the anxious/ambivalent group is not an artifact of that group being younger in this sample. The groups were the same age on average and still reported different relationship lengths.
Divorce in the same report was 10 percent for anxious/ambivalent respondents, 6 percent for secure respondents, and 12 percent for avoidant respondents. The anxious/ambivalent mean length is the shortest of the three, and the avoidant divorce figure is the highest. The paper gives you separate numbers. A 4.86-year mean is an average across the relationships people chose to describe, not a script for every couple in the group.
Readers had been asked for their single most important love relationship, past or current. In the sample overall, 61 percent of those relationships were current and 39 percent were past. The length means are about the relationship they chose to describe. They are not a clock that starts on a first date and ends at a lab visit.
Which feelings set this group apart?
Anxious/ambivalent subjects experienced love as obsession, desire for reciprocation and union, emotional highs and lows, and extreme sexual attraction and jealousy. They scored apart from the other two groups on obsessive preoccupation, sexual attraction, desire for union, desire for reciprocation, and love at first sight.
"Scored apart" means the paper presents those dimensions as places where this group did not simply blend into the other two. Obsession shows up in the experience summary and again as obsessive preoccupation. Desire for union is in the item itself, in the phrase "merge completely," and again in the results. Desire for reciprocation is the wish to be met. Jealousy and emotional highs and lows are in the experience summary. Extreme sexual attraction is named there, and sexual attraction is one of the separating scores.
Love at first sight is on the separating list. The newspaper paragraph you just read does not use that phrase. The finding comes from the love-experience questions, not from the three-way self-classification wording alone. If you only remember the paragraph, you will miss that the authors also tied this group to love at first sight as a measured difference.
Avoidant lovers were characterized by fear of intimacy, emotional highs and lows, and jealousy. Highs, lows, and jealousy appear in both insecure descriptions. What the authors mark as distinctive for the anxious/ambivalent group is the cluster above: obsessive preoccupation, sexual attraction, desire for union, desire for reciprocation, and love at first sight. Avoidant subjects never had the highest mean on a positive love-experience dimension, and they were the least accepting. Those avoidant results are the contrast, not the portrait of the 19 percent.
Where did the two insecure groups fail to separate?
On happiness, friendship, trust, and fear of closeness, secure subjects differed from both insecure groups, who did not differ from each other. The anxious/ambivalent group was not, on those four dimensions, a unique third point. Secure readers were the ones who described love as especially happy, friendly, and trusting. Both insecure groups differed from that picture, and they resembled each other on it.
You can hold both findings without forcing them into a slogan. This group stood apart on obsession, sexual attraction, desire for union, desire for reciprocation, and love at first sight. This group did not stand apart from avoidant readers on happiness, friendship, trust, and fear of closeness. A relationship can be preoccupying and still not be the happier, friendlier, more trusting pattern the secure group reported.
Across both studies the authors reported approximately 56 percent secure, 24 percent avoidant, and 20 percent anxious/ambivalent. The 19 percent figure is the newspaper split. The approximate 20 percent is the two-study summary. Study 2 was 108 undergraduates, 38 men and 70 women, mean age 18, in a course called Understanding Human Conflict. It was not a self-selected newspaper sample. The combined figure is a check on the rough size of the category. It does not turn the category into a diagnosis, and it does not mean a college classroom and a Lifestyles page are the same kind of sample.
What limits did the authors put on the item?
Use this category as a description from a 1987 paper, not as a diagnosis. Hazan and Shaver did not present a clinical assessment. They presented a forced-choice paragraph in a newspaper quiz. Calling yourself anxious/ambivalent because a sentence sounds familiar is not the same thing as a clinician evaluating a disorder. The paper does not claim that it is.
The limits they do state are practical. Newspaper respondents self-select, and they tend to be slightly more educated and more often women. The style item forces several issues into one choice. Child-parent bonds differ from adult romance, because romance is mutual and it usually includes sexual attraction. Correlations with parent history were significant but not strong, and they are likely to weaken with age. Some adults revise their models in later relationships. The authors say the results suggest, but do not prove, that the same sorts of forces that affect infant attachment may affect these adult choices.
Those limits change how you should hear "19 percent." It is not a census of your city. It is the share of self-selected newspaper readers who checked one blended paragraph. The people who skipped the item, and the people who checked more than one box, are a reminder that the three paragraphs did not fit everyone. Twenty-one skips and twenty-five double checks show the item's strain even though the classified groups are larger.
If the paragraph sounds like your week, the useful question is which clause is doing the work. Is it the worry that your partner does not really love you or will not stay? Is it the wish to merge? Is it the sense that the wish scares people away? The study required a single check. Your life does not. Separating those clauses will not give you a score the authors published. It will keep you from treating a bundled sentence as a name you have to keep.
This is education drawn from one journal article. It is not a diagnosis and not a treatment plan. If obsessive worry, jealousy, or fear of being left is crowding out sleep, work, or the way you treat your partner, a licensed clinician can help you sort out what a 1985 questionnaire item cannot.
The quiz's full chronology, including how Study 2 sat beside the newspaper, is told as a dated sequence in the Rocky Mountain News quiz, from front page to classroom.
Which sentence in that anxious/ambivalent paragraph would you still check today, and which sentence would you refuse to bundle with it?
Where this comes from
Hazan, C., and Shaver, P. (1987). Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(3), 511–524. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.52.3.511
Frequently Asked Questions
- How many readers picked that blended paragraph?
- The 1987 report puts the choice at 110 people in the newspaper group, presented as nineteen percent of those who classified themselves.
- What was the length gap versus secure readers?
- This group's average reported duration was 4.86 years. Readers who chose the comfortable-closeness description averaged 10.02 years. Both groups had a mean age of 36.
- Which love experiences marked this group?
- Obsession, a hunger to merge and to be loved back, jealousy, emotional swings, intense sexual pull, and falling in love immediately were where the authors said this group stood apart.
- Why is the category not a diagnosis?
- The tool was one bundled paragraph in a quiz people opted into. The authors called the pattern suggestive about early bonds and not proven, and a clinician's evaluation is a different process.
- Did the two insecure groups match on trust?
- They did not separate from each other there, nor on happiness, friendship, or fear of getting close. Secure readers were the ones who differed from both.