Quick answer
The Lifestyles quiz of July 26, 1985, produced a 56, 25, and 19 percent split, with 21 skips and 25 double checks, later set beside a classroom sample of 108 students.
On July 26, 1985, the Rocky Mountain News ran a love quiz in the Lifestyles section and flagged it on the front page. The flag read: "Tell us about the love of your life; experts ask 95 questions about your most important romance." Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver published the results two years later, in 1987, as "Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process," in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. This article follows that quiz in time: what the paper asked, how the item was worded, who skipped or double-checked, what the split was, and how a later classroom sample served as a check. It does not add a dating-versus-married percentage the paper's report, as used here, does not contain.
What readers were asked to describe
The quiz did not ask for a personality in the abstract. Readers described their single most important love relationship, past or current. In the sample, 61 percent of those relationships were current and 39 percent were past. If you are dating, "current" is the bucket your relationship would fall into only if you chose it as the most important one. What the figures show is that the object of the quiz was a romance the reader treated as most important, and that romance could be ongoing or already over.
The authors' own contrast with childhood is the dating-relevant limit. They write that child-parent bonds differ from adult romance because romance is mutual, and it usually includes sexual attraction. A dating relationship, when it is romantic, sits on that adult side of their distinction: two people, mutuality, and usually sexual attraction. The quiz was not a measure of how you attached to a parent. It was a measure tied to a love relationship. That is as specific as the dating claim can get without stuffing the sample with a status the notes do not report.
The three paragraphs, as printed
Self-classification used one item with three descriptions. Secure, N=319, 56 percent: "I find it relatively easy to get close to others and am comfortable depending on them and having them depend on me. I don't often worry about being abandoned or about someone getting too close to me."
Avoidant, N=145, 25 percent: "I am somewhat uncomfortable being close to others; I find it difficult to trust them completely, difficult to allow myself to depend on them. I am nervous when anyone gets too close, and often, love partners want me to be more intimate than I feel comfortable being."
Anxious/ambivalent, N=110, 19 percent: "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."
If you are dating, you can hear each paragraph as a way of describing the romance rather than as a permanent ID card. The secure wording is about ease of closeness, comfort with depending and being depended on, and a relative absence of worry about abandonment or about someone getting too close. The avoidant wording is about discomfort, incomplete trust, trouble depending, nervousness when closeness increases, and a gap between what a love partner wants and what feels comfortable. The anxious/ambivalent wording is about others holding back, worry that love is not real or will not last, and a wish to merge that can scare people away. You would have had to pick one package. The item forces several issues into one choice. Dating you, today, can notice which clause fits and which clause was only along for the ride. The 1985 reader could not do that on the form.
Skips, double checks, and the split
Twenty-one people skipped the item. Twenty-five checked more than one. Those two counts belong in the chronology beside 56, 25, and 19, because they show the item failing to catch everyone cleanly. A skipped box is a reader who got through a 95-question quiz and still did not place themselves. A double check is a reader who recognized more than one description. The percentages describe the people who landed in a single category. They do not describe the skips, and they do not dissolve the double checks into a fourth style.
Across both studies the authors reported approximately 56 percent secure, 24 percent avoidant, and 20 percent anxious/ambivalent. The newspaper's 25 percent avoidant and 19 percent anxious/ambivalent sit close to that two-study approximation of 24 and 20. The secure share is 56 percent in the newspaper and approximately 56 percent across both studies. The chronology matters: the split is not one sample frozen on that July date. It is a newspaper result, then a combined statement that stayed near the same shape.
What the secure group said about the relationship itself, happy, friendly, trusting, and accepting of faults, is a different layer than the paragraph they checked. That layer is the one to read if you want the study's picture of the love, not only the self-classification. It is summarized, with the fear-of-intimacy scale beside it, in what the secure group actually reported as happy, friendly, trusting love.
Study 2, the classroom check
Study 2 was built as a different kind of sample. Hazan and Shaver reported 108 undergraduates, 38 men and 70 women, mean age 18, in a course called Understanding Human Conflict. This was not a self-selected newspaper sample. Mean age 18 is far from the newspaper groups, whose average age was 36 in all three classifications. Everyone in Study 2 was in a course, not recruited by a front-page flag inviting them to describe the love of their life. The gender split was still uneven: 38 men and 70 women. The check is about selection method and age, not about a perfectly even room.
The two-study approximation, about 56 percent secure, 24 percent avoidant, and 20 percent anxious/ambivalent, is how the classroom result speaks in these notes. Study 2 functions as a check that the newspaper split was not only a quirk of people who answer a Lifestyles quiz. It does not function as a dating census of eighteen-year-olds. The notes do not say how many of those students were dating. They say who was in the room, how old they were on average, and that the sample was not the newspaper.
What the authors would not let the quiz prove
Newspaper respondents self-select. They tend to be slightly more educated and more often women. That limit sits on Study 1, the July 26 quiz, and Study 2 was the attempt to see the pattern outside that pile. The style item still forces several issues into one choice in either setting. 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.
For someone dating now, the honest use of the chronology is modest. On July 26, 1985, a newspaper asked about a most important romance and offered three paragraphs. Most classified readers, 56 percent, took the secure paragraph. A quarter took the avoidant paragraph. About a fifth, 19 percent, took the anxious/ambivalent paragraph. Some skipped. Some marked two. A younger classroom sample, not recruited by the front page, was later summarized with a similar approximate split. Romance, in the authors' words, is mutual and usually includes sexual attraction, which is why the quiz is about adult love rather than about a child and a caregiver. The quiz does not tell you the percentage of respondents who were dating rather than married. If a chart online adds that figure, it is not coming from the extract this article is willing to use.
The quiz was also used to describe the love itself. Secure respondents called it especially happy, friendly, and trusting, and they emphasized accepting faults. Avoidant lovers were characterized by fear of intimacy, emotional highs and lows, and jealousy, and they were the least accepting. Anxious/ambivalent subjects experienced obsession, desire for reciprocation and union, highs and lows, and extreme sexual attraction and jealousy. On happiness, friendship, trust, and fear of closeness, the secure group differed from both insecure groups, who did not differ from each other. Mean length was 10.02 years, 5.97 years, and 4.86 years at the same average age of 36. Those are findings about the relationships people described, not a ranking of who deserves another date.
This chronology is education about a published study. It will not classify you. If the worry, jealousy, or shutdown described in those paragraphs is harming your days, a licensed clinician can help you look at the pattern. A newspaper item cannot.
The next useful step is concrete. Write the date July 26, 1985, at the top of a page, copy only the one paragraph you would have checked, and underline the single clause that fits your current romance. Leave the other clauses unchecked, on purpose, because the original item would not let you.
The paper behind the dates
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
- When did the romance quiz run?
- The Rocky Mountain News carried it on that July date, inside Lifestyles, and pointed to it from the front page.
- What were the three shares, the skips, and the double marks?
- Comfort with closeness was 56 percent (319 people), discomfort and distrust 25 percent (145), and the worry-and-merge wording 19 percent (110). Twenty-one readers left the item blank. Twenty-five ticked more than one description.
- What was the classroom check?
- Study 2 was a conflict course of 108 students, 70 of them women and 38 men, averaging 18 years old. They were not volunteers answering a lifestyle page. Combined with the newspaper, the authors summarized the split as about 56, 24, and 20 percent.
- Does the extract give a dating-only percentage?
- It does not. Romances in the newspaper sample were 61 percent ongoing and 39 percent already over. No further split into dating versus marriage is stated, so none is added here.
- What limit matters if you are dating now?
- You would have had to swallow several issues in one choice. The authors said adult romance is mutual and usually sexual, unlike a child-caregiver bond, and that the results suggest a parallel with infant attachment without proving it.