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The role of attachment avoidance in extradyadic sex

Genevieve Beaulieu-Pelletiera; Frederick L. Philippeb; Serge Lecoursa; Stéphanie CoutureaaDepartment of Psychology, Université de Montréal, Montreal, Canada b Department of Psychology,
McGill University, Montreal, Canada
Online publication date: 18 April 2011

To cite this Article Beaulieu-Pelletier, Genevieve , Philippe, Frederick L. , Lecours, Serge and Couture, Stéphanie(2011)'The role of attachment avoidance in extradyadic sex', Attachment & Human Development, 13: 3, 293 — 313
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/14616734.2011.562419
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Attachment & Human Development
Vol. 13, No. 3, May 2011, 293–313

The role of attachment avoidance in extradyadic sex
Genevieve Beaulieu-Pelletiera*, Frederick L. Philippeb, Serge Lecoursa andStéphanie CoutureaaDepartment of Psychology, Universite´ de Montre´al, Montreal, Canada; bDepartment of
Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, Canada

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(Received 30 August 2009; ﬁnal version received 1 July 2010)
The purposes of the present research were to examine the relationship between
attachment and extradyadic sex and to investigate a mediator of this relationship.
Study 1 showed that attachment avoidance was positively associated withextradyadic sex, while attachment anxiety was unrelated to it. These results weremaintained after controlling for sexual satisfaction, sexual desire, gender, and age.
Study 2 replicated the results from Study 1, while also controlling for couple
adjustment. Study 3 used a prospective design and further showed that concernswith the partner’s desire for engagement mediated the relationship between
attachment avoidance and extradyadic sex. Overall, the ﬁndings suggest that
attachment avoidance increases people’s irritation relative to their partner’s desire
for engagement which, in turn, increases their likelihood to engage in extradyadic
sex. The possibility that individuals characterized by attachment avoidance mightuse extradyadic sex as a way to distance themselves from their partner is discussed.
Keywords: attachment; avoidance; extradyadic sex; inﬁdelity

Introduction
We live in a society characterized by a strong endorsement of faithfulness in couples.
This is easily perceived through various social indices, such as wedding wishes (e.g.,swearing ﬁdelity to one’s partner), standards for monogamy, or massive coverage of
public ﬁgures’ aﬀairs in the media. In addition, people generally have a negative
perception of extradyadic sex involvement (i.e., having a sexual intercourse withsomeone other than the primary romantic partner, in violation of this partner’s
understanding that the relationship is monogamous or exclusive to this partner).
Past studies (e.g., Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, & Michaels, 1994) showed that up to
77% of American citizens believed that extramarital sex was always wrong. Despite
such a social context, extradyadic sex is not exceptional. Indeed, prior research
revealed that 31% to 49% of undergraduate students (Wiederman & Hurd, 1999)
and 19% to 34% of married people (Wiederman, 1997) reported at least one lifetime
incident of extradyadic sex. It is thus not surprising that extradyadic sex is one of the
major sources of relationship distress and dissolution (Allen & Baucom, 2004; Buss
& Shackelford, 1997). These estimates, combined with the signiﬁcant negative
repercussions of extradyadic sex, suggest that extradyadic sex is an important social
phenomenon that needs to be further understood.

*Corresponding author. Email: genevieve.beaulieu-pelletier@umontreal.ca
ISSN 1461-6734 print/ISSN 1469-2988 online
Ó 2011 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/14616734.2011.562419
http://www.informaworld.com

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G. Beaulieu-Pelletier et al.

The type of emotional investment people hold with respect to their romantic
relationships appears to be critical when considering extradyadic sex (e.g., Allen &Baucom, 2004; Buss & Shackelford, 1997; Drigotas, Safstrom, & Gentilia, 1999).
These patterns of emotional involvement in couples can be understood as being
grounded on attachment styles. Indeed, adult attachment theory appears to be ahighly relevant framework for examining extradyadic sex (Blow & Hartnett, 2005) as
adult attachment has been related to numerous relational behaviors, such as
relationship satisfaction and commitment (Collins & Read, 1990; Simpson, 1990),
beliefs and attitudes toward romantic love (Hazan & Shaver, 1987), and relationshipthreatening situations (Simpson, Ickes, & Grich, 1999). In addition, interactions
between the attachment and sexual systems are theorized to constitute romantic love(e.g., Fraley & Shaver, 2000; Shaver, Hazan, & Bradshaw, 1988) and to aﬀect a
person’s motives for having sex (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). Thus, the goal of thepresent research was to examine the role of attachment in extradyadic sex.
Attachment and extradyadic sex
Past research has shown that attachment avoidance is positively associated with apositive attitude toward casual sex (e.g., sex without love, uncommitted sex), a larger
number of casual sex experiences, and an interest in emotionless sex and one-night
stands (e.g., Allen & Baucom, 2004; Brennan & Shaver, 1995; Gentzler & Kerns,
2004; see also Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). Avoidant individuals are not prone toform long-term relationships (Hazan & Shaver, 1987), thus potentially increasing
their number of partners (Bogaert & Sadava, 2002). Avoidant individuals are
believed to fear intimacy in such a way that this uncomfortableness with engagement
and closeness is usually conducive to emotional distance and independence (Hazan &Shaver, 1987; Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). Therefore, they might need to distancethemselves from their partner when they perceive cues of engagement and proximityfrom their partner. Because extradyadic sex has been shown to reduce couple’s
intimacy, proximity, and emotional engagement levels (Charny & Parnass, 1995;
Shackelford & Buss, 1997), avoidant individuals might be more inclined to use
extradyadic sex (Brennan & Shaver, 1995; Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007; Stephan &Bachman, 1999) as a strategy to reduce the degree of intimacy within their romantic
relationship (Allen & Baucom, 2004). Overall, these various results suggest that
attachment avoidance may be positively related to extradyadic sex.
Conversely, attachment anxiety has been associated with stable and long-term
relationships (Davis, Shaver, & Vernon, 2004; Feeney, 1994, 2002) and a desire forhighly committed relationships (Hazan & Shaver, 1987; Mikulincer & Erev, 1991).
Moreover, anxious individuals fear losing their partner or being abandoned(Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007) and are dependent lovers (Collins & Read, 1990).
Consequently, extradyadic sex involvement should be perceived as a threat to theircurrent romantic relationship, as anxious individuals are hypervigilant to potential
sources of relationship distress (e.g., Simpson et al., 1999) and are more likely tobelieve that their behavior in relationships can be destructive (Feeney & Noller,
1992; Stackert & Bursik, 2003). Thus, attachment anxiety should be negatively
associated or unrelated to extradyadic sex (Stephan & Bachman, 1999).
Overall, the above ﬁndings indirectly suggest that anxious individuals may not
get involved into casual or uncommitted sex, because of their deep reliance on apartner and strong need to be loved and cared for reliably. However, contradictoryDownloaded By: [Beaulieu-Pelletier, Genevieve] At: 12:00 23 April 2011

Attachment & Human Development295

to these theoretical positions and empirical ﬁndings, some studies have found that
attachment anxiety was positively related to favorable attitudes toward casual sex(Scharfe & Eldredge, 2001) and uncommitted sex, but only in women (e.g., Allen &Baucom, 2004; Bogaert & Sadava, 2002; Feeney, Peterson, Gallois, & Terry, 2000).
Little research has clearly examined the role of attachment in extradyadic sex per
se. In fact, as speciﬁed in the review of Blow and Hartnett (2005), only two studies(Allen & Baucom, 2004; Bogaert & Sadava, 2002) have linked attachment to
extradyadic sex and since then, to our knowledge, only one more study has been
conducted on this speciﬁc topic (Cooper, Pioli, Levitt, Talley, Micheas, & Collins,2006). Allen and Baucom (2004) showed that undergraduate men with an avoidant
attachment style reported the largest number of partners with whom theyexperienced either romantic (e.g., falling in love) or sexual behavior (e.g., sexualintercourse) while engaged in a primary romantic relationship. These authors havealso reported that avoidant participants from a community sample were more likely
to report having had romantic and/or sexual extradyadic partners, although thiseﬀect was only marginally signiﬁcant. In addition, they also found that undergraduate women with an anxious attachment style were also likely to report a large
number of romantic and/or sexual extradyadic partners, but there were no such
diﬀerences for anxious attachment, for either men or women, in a community
sample. Bogaert and Sadava (2002) reported no signiﬁcant relationship between
attachment avoidance and a past-year inﬁdelity factor (including having had anaﬀair, to have found that one’s partner had an aﬀair, and number of partners).
However, they showed that attachment anxiety, particularly for women, waspositively associated with this inﬁdelity factor. Finally, Cooper and colleagues (2006)
also reported that avoidant men and anxious women were more likely to cheat,
although the eﬀect for avoidant men was only marginally signiﬁcant (p 5 .10).
Thus, overall, the results of these studies are rather mixed. First, attachment
avoidance was signiﬁcantly related to cheating in only two of the three studies
presented above. In addition, this eﬀect was only signiﬁcant for men in two samples
and marginally signiﬁcant for men and women in one sample. Second, attachment
anxiety was signiﬁcantly related to extradyadic sex in three of the four samples
presented above, but only for women. One reason for these rather mixed andtheoretically contradictory results might be that most of the studies presented above
used diﬀerent types of extradyadic sex deﬁnition and measures that do not all tap
extradyadic sexual intercourses per se. For example, Allen and Baucom (2004)
deﬁned extradyadic involvement as including romantic and sexual behavior withsomeone other than the primary partner. Thus, behavior could range from falling inlove to sexual intercourse. This broad deﬁnition could partly explain why anxious
women were more likely to engage in extradyadic relationships in their study.
Indeed, anxious individuals may be more likely to seek love with an extradyadic
partner as a mean to obtain more reassurance and care compensation, as they havebeen found to fall in love easily and indiscriminately in hope of merging with anotherperson and increasing felt security (Hazan & Shaver, 1987). However, extradyadic
sex involvement per se might be perceived as too much of a threat of losing theirprimary romantic relationship (Feeney & Noller, 1992; Simpson et al., 1999; Stackert& Bursik, 2003). Other researchers have also not deﬁned extradyadic sex. For
example, Bogaert and Sadava’s (2002) deﬁnition of aﬀair was left up to the
respondents, which could thus include falling in love or other aspects unrelated tosexual intercourses.

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G. Beaulieu-Pelletier et al.

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In terms of the measures used, Allen and Baucom (2004) measured extradyadic
sex with the number of extradyadic partners within the last two years, which limits
the ﬁndings, as the frequency of extradyadic sex involvement is not accounted for.
Bogaert and Sadava (2002) evaluated inﬁdelity with a composite score that included
aspects unrelated to personal extradyadic sex, such as measures of whether one’s
partner had had an aﬀair in the past year. Overall, because attachment anxiety andavoidance may be associated with diﬀerent aspects of extradyadic relationships (lovevs. sex), there is a clear need to conduct research examining attachment andextradyadic sex with very speciﬁc and operational deﬁnitions and measures ofextradyadic sex.
Sexual satisfaction and desire
The studies presented above posit that extradyadic sex may be predicted byattachment-related motives. However, past research on extradyadic sex has also
shown that people may engage in extradyadic sex for sex-related motives. Indeed,sexual dissatisfaction within the couple has been frequently linked to extradyadic sex(Buss & Shackelford, 1997; Glass & Wright, 1992). The level of sexual desire (i.e.,interest in sex) is also believed to be associated with extradyadic sex (Meston & Buss,
2007; Treas & Giesen, 2000). Therefore, the relationship between attachment andextradyadic sex should be examined independently of sexual satisfaction and desire.
Present research
The purpose of the present research was to examine the relationship between
attachment and extradyadic sex, independently of sex-related motives for
extradyadic sex. Three studies have been conducted to examine this issue. Study 1
investigated the association between attachment and extradyadic sex in undergraduate students, while controlling for sexual satisfaction and desire. Study 2
replicated results of Study 1 within a community-dwelling population, while also
controlling for couple adjustment. Study 3 examined the relationship between
attachment and extradyadic sex within a prospective design over a 10-month period.
In addition, Study 3 examined a mediator of the relationship between attachment
avoidance and extradyadic sex. All three studies also examined the eﬀect of genderand age and their interaction with attachment.
Study 1The purpose of Study 1 was to assess the relationship between attachment andextradyadic sex. In light of the mixed results between attachment and extradyadic sex
and of the lack of empirical evidence on extradyadic sexual intercourse per se, we
founded our hypotheses on the theoretical positions advanced by attachment theory
rather than on past empirical ﬁndings. Thus, because avoidant individuals might bemore inclined to engage in extradyadic sex as a way to reduce their degree of
intimacy and to maintain distance with their partner, it was hypothesized that
attachment avoidance would be positively associated with extradyadic sex.
Conversely, because anxious individuals are highly dependent and seek highcommitment with their primary partner, they should not be inclined to engage inextradyadic sex, as it might be perceived as a threat to their current romantic

Attachment & Human Development297

relationship. Therefore, attachment anxiety was expected to be either negatively
associated or unrelated to extradyadic sex. In addition, it was hypothesized thatthese results should hold after controlling for sexual satisfaction and desire and forthe eﬀects of gender and age.
Finally, no past research to our knowledge has clearly distinguished extradyadic
sex intentions from actual extradyadic sex involvement in the inﬁdelity domain.
Because some diﬀerences might exist between contemplating extradyadic sex andactually involving in extradyadic sex intercourse, separate items were used in Study 1
to assess extradyadic sex intentions and involvement.

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MethodParticipantsParticipants were 151 undergraduate students from a French-Canadian university.
Only participants engaged in a romantic relationship were selected. The ﬁnal sample
was composed of 89 (58 females, 31 males) participants with a mean age of 24.45
years (SD ¼ 5.86).
MeasuresAttachment. The Experiences in Close Relationships Inventory (ECR; Brennan,
Clark, & Shaver, 1998) is composed of 36 items responded to on a seven-point Likert
scale ranging from 1 (do not agree at all) to 7 (completely agree) and assesses
participants’ attachment dimensions. Half of the items pertains to attachmentrelated avoidance (e.g., ‘‘I prefer not to be too close to my romantic partners’’) while
the other half assesses attachment-related anxiety (e.g., ‘‘I worry a lot about myrelationship’’). On the basis of prior pilot studies from other data (Philippe et al.,2009), the 10 top-loading items of the full ECR scale on their respective avoidant andanxious dimensions were retained for the present study in order to form a short 20item version of the ECR. A Conﬁrmatory Factor Analysis was conducted to examine
the two-factor structure of this short ECR using the present Studies 1 and 2 full
databases combined (n ¼ 415). Robust Maximum Likelihood was used as themethod of estimation because attachment scale responses are usually non-normally
distributed (Brennan et al., 1998). Results revealed excellent ﬁt indices for a twofactor structure, SB w2 (df ¼ 165, n ¼ 415) ¼ 367.48, p ¼ .000, NFI ¼ .93, NNFI ¼.96, CFI ¼ .96, RMSEA ¼ .05 [.045; .059], SRMR ¼ .09 (with four measurement
error covariances). Factor loadings were acceptable, ranging from .37 to .77. The
correlation between the two latent variables (attachment anxiety and avoidance) was.35, p 5 .05. Finally, an alternative one-factor model yielded poor ﬁt indices, SB w2(df ¼ 166, n ¼ 415) ¼ 940.18, p 5 .000, NFI ¼ .83, NNFI ¼ .83, CFI ¼ .85,
RMSEA ¼ .10 [.094; .107], SRMR ¼ .12. These ﬁndings imply that the two-factor
structure should be preferred, and thus that the present short 20-item ECR version
preserves the factorial structure of the full ECR version. Alphas in this study were
.78 and .84 for the avoidant and anxious subscales, respectively.
Sexual satisfaction. One item devised for the purpose of the present study was
responded to on a ﬁve-point Likert scale (1 ¼ not satisﬁed at all, 5 ¼ totally satisﬁed)
and sought to assess participants’ current sexual satisfaction (‘‘To what extent are298

G. Beaulieu-Pelletier et al.

you currently sexually satisﬁed in your life?’’). This item was shown to correlate at.79 with the Pinney Sexual Satisfaction Inventory (Pinney, Gerrard, & Denney,1987), based on other data of ours (Philippe, Koestner, & Beaulieu-Pelletier, 2009).

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Sexual desire. Four key items were derived from past research (Rosen, Riley,
Wagner, Osterloh, Kirkpatrick, & Mishra, 1997; Spector, Carey, & Steinberg, 1996)
in order to assess sexual desire. A sample item is ‘‘How frequently is it necessary for
you to undertake a sexual activity’’. All items were responded to on a seven-point
Likert scale (1 ¼ never, 7 ¼ extremely often). A Principal Components Analysis was
conducted to examine the factorial structure of these four items. One component
emerged at 2.38 eigenvalues, explaining 60% of the variance (all other eigenvalues
50.88). All four items had high factor loadings on this single component ranging
from .53 to .91. Alpha was .79.
Extradyadic sex. Three items were devised for the purpose of the present study inorder to examine extradyadic sex. First, unfaithfulness was deﬁned for theparticipants as having a sexual intercourse with someone at the same time you areseriously engaged in a romantic relationship with a partner and in violation of thispartner’s understanding that the relationship is monogamous (exclusive to thispartner). Two items sought to assess past and present intentions of extradyadic
sex: ‘‘At what frequency have you ever thought about being unfaithful to a partnerwith whom you were with?’’ and ‘‘To what extent do you presently think about being
unfaithful to your partner?’’ One item sought to assess past extradyadic sex
involvement: ‘‘At what frequency have you actually been unfaithful to a partner withwhom you were with’’. All three items were responded to on a seven-point Likert
scale ranging from 1 (never) to 7 (extremely often). Inter-item correlations ranged
from .52 to .73 for all three items.
Procedure
Participants were told that the purpose of the study was to ﬁnd out more about
students’ sexual attitudes and behavior. It was also mentioned that their
participation was voluntary and anonymous and that all their responses would
remain conﬁdential. Participants were asked to complete the ECR, the extradyadic
sex items and the items with respect to sexual satisfaction and desire.
Results
Preliminary analyses were conducted to examine gender diﬀerences among all study
variables. Results revealed gender diﬀerences on attachment anxiety (t[87] ¼ 2.72,
p 5 .01, d ¼ .62) and sexual desire (t[87] ¼ 2.49, p 5 .05, d ¼ .55). Women
reported higher levels of attachment anxiety (M ¼ 3.63, SD ¼ 1.15) than men(M ¼ 2.97, SD ¼ 0.88), while men reported higher levels of sexual desire (M ¼ 5.09,
SD ¼ 0.97) than women (M ¼ 4.58, SD ¼ 0.90). There were no gender diﬀerenceson all extradyadic sex variables.
A Principal Component Analysis was ﬁrst conducted in order to examine if thethree extradyadic sex items actually referred or not to the same construct. Results
revealed that all three extradyadic sex items loaded on the same factor, with factor
loadings ranging from .82 to .91. Furthermore, correlational results revealed that

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Attachment & Human Development

each of the three extradyadic sex items was positively associated with attachment
avoidance (rs 4 .29, ps 5 .05, see Table 1). In addition, they were all unrelated toattachment anxiety. These results suggest that extradyadic sex intentions (past andpresent) and extradyadic sex involvement converge on a same dimension and are all
correlated similarly with attachment avoidance. Therefore, a composite extradyadic
sex score was created by averaging the three items and was used in the subsequent
analyses.
To assess the relationship between attachment and extradyadic sex while
controlling for sexual satisfaction, sexual desire, and gender, a multiple hierarchicalregression analysis was conducted. The composite extradyadic sex score served as thedependent variable. At Step 1, attachment anxiety, sexual satisfaction, sexual desire,and gender were entered as independent variables. At Step 2, attachment avoidance
was entered. As can be seen in Table 2, attachment anxiety was not a signiﬁcantpredictor of the composite extradyadic sex score at Step 1, while controlling for sexual
satisfaction, sexual desire, and gender. At Step 2, attachment avoidance waspositively associated with extradyadic sex, over and above all other variables,
accounting for 10% of the variance. Finally, controlling for age did not alter the

Table 1.

Means, standard deviations, and correlations: Study 1.

Attachment avoidance
Attachment anxiety
Composite extradyadic sex score
Past extradyadic sex intentions
Present extradyadic sex intentions
Past extradyadic sex involvement
Sexual satisfaction
Sexual desire

Mean

SD

Attachment
avoidance

Attachment
anxiety

2.50
3.40
2.19
2.73
2.00
1.84
3.84
4.76

.89
1.11
1.15
1.56
1.27
1.15
.87
.96

–
.31**
.38**
.29**
.37**
.32**
7.30**
7.03

–
–
.10
.13
7.01
.16
7.25*
.08

Note: n ¼ 89. *p 5 .05, **p 5 .01.

Table 2. Multiple regression analyses of extradyadic sex variables on attachment anxiety andavoidance, controlling for sexual satisfaction, sexual desire and gender: Study 1.
Past
extradyadic
sex intentions

Past
extradyadic
sex involvement

Present
extradyadic
sex intentions

Compositeextradyadic
sex score

.07
7.17
.26*
7.01
2.55*
.11
.28*

.09
7.35
.10
.02
3.76**
.16
.23*

7.10
7.33**.24*
7.02
3.75**
.16
.37**

.02
7.31**.24**
7.01
4.05**
.17
.34**

6.01*
.06

4.35*
.04

12.61**.12

10.34**.10

Step1. Attachment anxiety
Sexual satisfaction
Sexual desire
GenderF
R2
Step 2. Attachment
avoidance
FchangeR2change
Note: n ¼ 89. *p 5 .05, **p 5 .01.

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G. Beaulieu-Pelletier et al.

present results. In addition, there were no signiﬁcant interactions between attachment
and gender or between attachment and age. Also, results were the same when
examining in a regression each extradyadic sex item separately (see Table 2).
Overall, results of Study 1 supported the theoretical positions of attachment
theory, as it was found that attachment avoidance was positively associated withextradyadic sex. Such was not the case for attachment anxiety that was found to beunrelated to extradyadic sex. Finally, these results were maintained even after
controlling for sexual satisfaction, sexual desire, gender, and age.

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Study 2
Study 2 aimed at replicating the results of Study 1 within a sample of communitydwelling participants. Such a sample was obtained in order to increase the ecologicalvalidity of the relationship found in Study 1 between attachment avoidance andextradyadic sex. In addition, the sample of Study 2 was suﬃciently large in order touse more reﬁned statistical analyses, namely structural equation modeling.
Study 2 also aimed at controlling for couple adjustment. In past research, couple
adjustment has been related to attachment (Lussier, Sabourin, & Turgeon, 1997;
Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). Research has shown that both attachment avoidance
and anxiety led to lower satisfaction in the romantic relationship. Couple adjustment
has also been related to extradyadic sex (see Allen et al., 2005, for a review on
extramarital involvement). Thus, the relationship between attachment and extradyadic sex should be examined while taking into account couple adjustment. In linewith Study 1, it was hypothesized that attachment avoidance would be positively
associated with measures of extradyadic sex (independently of sexual satisfaction,
desire, couple adjustment and gender) while attachment anxiety was expected to beunrelated to extradyadic sex.

MethodParticipantsParticipants were 270 (151 females, 119 males) visitors of a commercial exhibition on‘‘love and romance’’ held in Montreal, Canada. Only participants engaged in aromantic relationship were recruited. Participants were 27 years old on average(SD ¼ 9.33 years).
MeasuresAttachment. The 20-item version of the ECR used in Study 1 was used in Study 2 toassess attachment. Alphas in this study were .71 and .83 for the avoidant and anxious
subscales, respectively.
Extradyadic sex. The items used in Study 1 to examine extradyadic sex were also
used in Study 2. An additional item slightly modiﬁed from the Anonymous
Romantic Attraction Survey (ARAS; Schmitt et al., 2004) was also employed toassess extradyadic sex (‘‘While you were engaged in a romantic relationship, to what
extent have you ever tried to attract someone else for a short-term sexual
relationship with you?’’). All items were responded to on a seven-point Likert scale

Attachment & Human Development

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(1 ¼ never, 7 ¼ extremely often). Finally, the relationship exclusivity dimension of
the Sexy-Seven (Schmitt & Buss, 2000) was administered in order to assessparticipants’ self-description related to faithfulness. Eight adjectives compose theRelationship Exclusivity dimension (e.g., faithful, promiscuous, adulterous). These
items were mixed with other ﬁller adjective items (e.g., loving, careful). Participants
were asked to evaluate ‘‘the extent to which each of these adjectives describe yoursexuality’’ on a nine-point Likert scale (1 ¼ extremely false, 9 ¼ extremely true).
Alpha in this study was .75 for this dimension. Items were reverse-coded so that ahigh score on this dimension expresses high levels of unfaithfulness or of relationshipnon-exclusivity. Overall, inter-item correlations among the extradyadic sex items andthe Relationship Non-Exclusivity Scale ranged from .51 to .71.
Sexual satisfaction and desire. The items used in Study 1 were used in Study 2. Alphafor the sexual desire items was .60.
Couple adjustment. The Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS-32; Spanier, 1976) was used
to assess couple adjustment. Recently, Sabourin, Valois, and Lussier (2005) showedusing IRT analyses that four items derived from the original DAS accounted for a
maximum of variance in couple adjustment and were representative of the complete
original scale. These four items were thus used. It should be noted that this shortversion of the DAS does not include items assessing sexual satisfaction or sexual
communication within the couple. The DAS-4 uses a six-point Likert scale ranging
from 0 (always disagree) to 5 (always agree). A sample item is ‘‘In general, how often
do you think that things between you and your partner are going well?’’ Alpha
was .84.
Procedure
Participants were solicited by one of three research assistants at a commercial
exhibition on ‘‘love and romance’’ held in Montreal, Canada. Participants were toldthat the purpose of the study was to ﬁnd out more about people’s sexual attitudes
and behavior. It was also mentioned that their participation was voluntary andanonymous, and that all their responses would remain conﬁdential. Participants
were asked to complete the questionnaire individually on tables that were madeavailable for this purpose and then handed it to one of the assistants.
Results
Preliminary analyses were conducted in order to examine gender diﬀerences among
all study variables. Results revealed that there were gender diﬀerences on attachment
anxiety (t[268] ¼ 2.43, p 5 .05, d ¼ .30), sexual desire (t[268] ¼ 3.14, p 5 .01,
d ¼ .39), and relationship non-exclusivity (t[268] ¼ 2.00, p 5 .05, d ¼ .26). Females
reported higher levels of attachment anxiety than males (MF ¼ 3.64, SDF ¼ 1.23;
MM ¼ 3.30, SDM ¼ 1.02), whereas males reported higher levels of sexual desire(MM ¼ 5.35, SDM ¼ 0.85; MF ¼ 5.03, SDF ¼ 0.79) and of relationship nonexclusivity (MM ¼ 3.03, SDM ¼ 1.39; MF ¼, 2.67, SDF ¼, 1.34) than females.
Table 3 reports the means, standard deviations, and correlations of all study
variables. Preliminary correlational results revealed that attachment avoidance waspositively associated with all extradyadic sex variables (rs ¼ .16 to .23, all ps 5 .05),

Note: n ¼ 270. *p 5 .05, **p 5 .01.

.86
1.16
1.52
1.48
1.31
1.41
1.45
.89
.84
.66

1.77
1.84
3.46
4.16
5.19
4.04

SD

2.42
3.46
2.19
1.89

Mean

.18**
7.37**
7.05
7.43**

.16*
.17**

–
.26**
.18**
.23**

1

Means, standard deviations, and correlations: Study 2.

Attachment avoidance (1)Attachment anxiety (2)Past extradyadic sex intentions (3)Present extradyadic sex intentions(4)
Past extradyadic sex involvement (5)Intentions to attract someone for asexual intercourse (6)Relationship non-exclusivity (7)Sexual satisfaction (8)Sexual desire (9)Couple adjustment (10)Table 3.

.07
7.04
.01
7.13*

.07
.03

–
7.01
7.01

2

.46**
7.23**.18**
7.18**

.66**
.55**

–
.49**

3

.45**
7.37**.06
7.42**

.37**
.32**

–

4

.49**
7.13*
.20**
7.16**–.63**

5

Downloaded By: [Beaulieu-Pelletier, Genevieve] At: 12:00 23 April 2011.45**
7.19**
.23**
7.13*

–

6

–
7.20**.18**
7.28**

7

–
7.03
.59**

8

–
.05

9

302
G. Beaulieu-Pelletier et al.

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Attachment & Human Development

303

while attachment anxiety was unrelated to them (rs ¼ 7.01 to .07, ns). These results
support our hypotheses and corroborate results of Study 1. In line with Study 1, theextradyadic sex items will be used as a single component in the full model.
To assess the relationship between attachment and extradyadic sex while
controlling for sexual satisfaction, desire, couple adjustment, and gender, astructural equation model was conducted in LISREL 8 (Jöreskog & Sörborm,
2003) with Robust Maximum Likelihood as the method of estimation. Observed
variables were computed using items random parceling for each construct (Bandalos,
2002). That is, groups of two or three items were combined in an observed variable
for each construct, except for extradyadic sex, as it was deemed important toexamine the factor loading of each item separately. Gender and sexual satisfaction
were only composed of one observed variable, so their variance was ﬁxed to 1.00.
Paths were drawn from each latent variable (attachment, sexual satisfaction, desire,
couple adjustment, and gender) to the latent variable of extradyadic sex. Test of thismodel revealed adequate ﬁt indices, SB w2 (df ¼ 100, n ¼ 270) ¼ 223.69, p 5 .001,
NC ¼ 2.24, NNFI ¼ .91, CFI ¼ .93, RMSEA ¼ .068 [.056; .080], GFI ¼ .91,
SRMR ¼ .071. This ﬁnal model, shown in Figure 1, revealed that attachment
avoidance was positively associated with extradyadic sex, while anxious attachment
was unrelated to it. All control variables were non-signiﬁcantly related to
extradyadic sex, except for sexual desire that positively predicted extradyadic sex.
Finally, including age in the model did not alter the results.

Figure 1. Structural equation model of the relationship between attachment and extradyadic
sex, while controlling for sexual satisfaction, sexual desire, couple adjustment, and gender.

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304

G. Beaulieu-Pelletier et al.

Model invariance was tested as a function of gender. Results for the baselinemodel with all parameters freely estimated were adequate: w2 (181) ¼ 295.97,
RMSEA ¼ .069. Results for the same model with all parameters ﬁxed were w2(226) ¼ 366.11. The chi-square diﬀerence between these two models was signiﬁcant,Dw2 (45) ¼ 61.66, p 5 .01, thus suggesting that the model was not totally invariant
across gender. A less stringent model was then tested, allowing all measurement
errors, variances and covariances to be freely estimated. The results of thisalternative model were w2 (196) ¼ 316.80. The chi-square diﬀerence between thislatter model and the baseline model showed to be non-signiﬁcant, Dw2 (15) ¼ 20.83,
ns (also taking into account the scaling factor of the Satorra-Bentler chi-square).
These results thus suggest that there was no diﬀerence in the structural equation
model with respect to factor loadings and path coeﬃcients between males andfemales.
In sum, results of Study 2 replicated those of Study 1, while extending theirecological validity. Indeed, it was found that attachment avoidance was positively
associated with extradyadic sex, even after controlling for sexual satisfaction, desire,
couple adjustment, gender, and age. Such was not the case for attachment anxiety
that was found to be unrelated to extradyadic sex. Overall, the present ﬁndings
provide support for the role of attachment avoidance in extradyadic sex intentions
and behaviors in a sample of community-dwelling people engaged in romantic
relationships.
Study 3
Study 3 served two purposes. First, Studies 1 and 2 both used cross-sectional designs.
Consequently, the direction of the relationship between participants’ ratings on theattachment scale and their report of extradyadic sex remains ambiguous. Therefore,
the ﬁrst purpose of Study 3 was to examine this relationship within a prospective
design over a 10-month period. A second purpose of Study 3 aimed at uncovering a
mediator of this relationship. Because avoidant individuals are irritated andbothered by the intimacy and proximity requested by their romantic partner(Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007), their irritation might increase their likelihood toengage in subsequent extradyadic sex as a mean to reduce their felt intimacy levels
with their partner. Indeed, Allen and Baucom (2004) showed that avoidant
individuals were more likely to report autonomy-related motives for extradyadic
sex, such as ‘‘I wanted a little freedom’’ and ‘‘I wanted some space from my primarypartner’’. Consequently, avoidant people who feel concerned with the prominent
expression of engagement and proximity of their partner during a particular periodof time may be more likely to engage in extradyadic sex (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007;
Stephan & Bachman, 1999). Therefore, concerns with one’s partner’s desire forengagement and proximity over a given period may mediate the relationship between
avoidance and extradyadic sex engagement over this period.
At Time 1, participants completed measures of attachment, sexual satisfaction,
desire, and couple adjustment. At Time 2, 10-month later, participants completed ascale measuring their concerns with their partner’s desire for engagement andproximity. In addition, they reported whether they have had a sexual intercoursewith someone other than their primary romantic partner between Times 1 and 2. Inline with the results of Studies 1 and 2, it was hypothesized that attachment avoidance would be positively associated with extradyadic sex involvement 10-monthAttachment & Human Development

305

later, while attachment anxiety would be unrelated to it. In addition, it was
hypothesized that concerns with partner’s desire for engagement and proximity
during the last 10 months (or for the duration of the relationship) would mediate theassociation between attachment avoidance and extradyadic sex. Finally, all theseresults should hold after controlling for sexual satisfaction, desire, and couple
adjustment measured at Time 1.

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Participants
At Time 1, participants were 174 (151 females and 23 males) undergraduate andgraduate psychology students from a French-Canadian university.1 A total of 90
participants (76 females and 14 males) completed both Times 1 and 2 for a response
rate of 52%. These participants were 28.53 years old on average (SD ¼ 7.78 years).
Participants who completed both phases of the study did not diﬀer from those who
only completed the questionnaire at Time 1 on all study variables (all Fs 5 1.20, ns).
From these 90 participants, six had not been involved at all in any romantic
relationship during the 10-month period. A total of 84 participants were thus ﬁnallyretained for the analyses. A total of 52 participants remained with their partner overthe 10-month period, while 13 separated between Time 1 and Time 2 (four of themwere with another partner at Time 2). In addition, 10 participants who were not in aromantic relationship at Time 1 found a partner throughout the 10-month period
and remained with this partner, while nine people who were single at Time 1
experienced at least one serious romantic relationship and separated from theirpartner, so that they were again single at Time 2.

Measures
Time 1 measures
Attachment. The ECR-S (Wei, Russell, Mallinckrodt, & Vogel, 2007), a recently
validated short version of the ECR, was used in the present study. The ECR-S iscomposed of 12 items. Because the items of the ECR-S do not entirely overlap with
the items included in our 20-item version (used in Studies 1 and 2), we decided to use
this 12-item version in order to examine the relationship between attachment andextradyadic sex with a relatively diﬀerent self-report measure of attachment.
Adequate evidence of validity and reliability has been reported for this short scale(Wei et al., 2007). Alphas in this study were .73 (avoidance) and .70 (anxiety).
Sexual satisfaction and desire. The items used in Studies 1 and 2 were used in Study 3.
Alpha for the sexual desire items was .64.
Couple adjustment. The DAS-4 used in Study 2 was used in Study 3. Alpha was .89.
Time 2 measures
Participants were asked to complete the scales used at Time 2 according to thefollowing conditions. Participants who were engaged in a romantic relationship at

306

G. Beaulieu-Pelletier et al.

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Time 1 were asked to complete the scales while referring to this relationship, and thatfor the interval of time between Time 1 and Time 2 or between Time 1 and themoment of their break-up. Participants who were not involved in a romantic
relationship at Time 1, but that had been involved in a relationship between Times 1
and 2 and/or who were still currently engaged in one at Time 2 were asked tocomplete the scales while referring to their last signiﬁcant relationship or current
relationship. Data showed that the minimum extent of time for either a last or acurrent relationship was at least over three months.
Concerns with partner’s engagement and proximity. Three items devised for the
purpose of the present study were used to measure one’s concerns with his/herpartner’s desire for engagement and proximity: ‘‘To what extent have you been
irritated by your partner’s desire of engagement’’, ‘‘To what extent have you been
bothered by your partner’s insistence on expressing his/her aﬀection to you’’, and‘‘To what extent have you been bothered by your partner’s desire for closeness withyou’’.2 Participants were asked to complete these items while referring to therelationship condition that conformed to their situation and for a maximum sinceTime 1. Alpha for this scale was .88.
Actual extradyadic sex. Participants who were currently engaged in a romantic
relationship were asked to respond to the following item: ‘‘From the time you havebeen with your current partner and only considering the time elapsed from July 2007
[i.e., Time 1], have you had a sexual intercourse with someone other than yourcurrent partner’’. Participants who were engaged in a romantic relationship at Time
1 but who had separated between Time 1 and Time 2 were asked to respond to thefollowing item: ‘‘From July 2007 [i.e., Time 1] up until the time of your separation,
have you had a sexual intercourse with someone other than your primary partner’’.
The items were responded to on a yes-or-no basis.
Procedure
All participants were randomly contacted with their institutional e-mail. Those who
agreed to complete the questionnaire logged into a secure website. At Time 1,
participants were asked to complete the attachment, sexual satisfaction, desire, andcouple adjustment scales. At Time 2, they completed the scale related to concernswith the partner’s engagement ﬁrst, and then the items evaluating their actual
extradyadic sex involvement.
Results
Table 4 reports the means, standard deviations, and correlations of all study
variables. A total of 11 individuals reported having engaged in an extradyadic sexualintercourse while they were with a primary partner for a rate of 13.1%. Correlational
results revealed that attachment avoidance was signiﬁcantly associated with bothconcerns with partner’s engagement desire (r ¼ .57, p 5 .001) and extradyadic sex(r ¼ .26, p 5 .05). Concerns with partner’s desire for engagement were also
positively associated with extradyadic sex (r ¼ .38, p 5 .01). Attachment anxiety
was unrelated to both concerns with partner’s desire for engagement andextradyadic sex.

307

Attachment & Human Development

To test the full mediation model, a path analysis was conducted with Mplus 5.2(Muthen & Muthen, 2007), using weighted least squares as the method of estimation.
This method of estimation handles dichotomous endogenous variables by estimating
logit regression coeﬃcients for the dichotomous variable (Muthen & Muthen,2007). Attachment avoidance and anxiety as well as sexual desire and satisfaction
were modeled as exogenous variables, while concerns with one’s partner engagement
and extradyadic sex served as endogenous variables. Paths were drawn from thecontrol variables (sexual satisfaction and desire) to all endogenous variables.
Figure 2 displays the full model. Results showed that attachment avoidance was

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Table 4.

Means, standard deviations, and correlations: Study 3.

Attachment
avoidance (1)Attachment
anxiety (2)Extradyadic sex
involvement (3)Concerns withpartner’s desire ofengagement andproximity (4)Sexual satisfaction (5)Sexual desire (6)Couple adjustmenta (7)

Mean

SD

1

2

3

4

5

6

2.62

1.03

3.38

1.04

.12

–

–

–

.26*

7.03

1.88

1.16

.57**

.10

3.55
4.64
3.81

1.21 7.09
7.36**.05.12–
0.87 7.07.13.56** 7.03 7.08–
0.87 7.42** 7.30* 7.03
7.26*
.35** .10

–

–
.38**

–

Note: n ¼ 84. Correlations were derived from the weighted least squares estimation. an ¼ 65. *p 5 .05,**p 5 .01.

Figure 2. Path analysis of the mediation among attachment avoidance, concerns withpartner’s engagement and extradyadic sex, while controlling for sexual satisfaction, sexualdesire, and attachment anxiety. Non-signiﬁcant paths from the control variables of sexual
satisfaction and sexual desire are not shown for the sake of clarity. Non-signiﬁcant direct
paths from attachment types to extradyadic sex are shown as dashed lines.

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308

G. Beaulieu-Pelletier et al.

positively associated with concerns with partner’s engagement, which were, in turn,
positively associated with extradyadic sex, even after controlling for sexual desire
and satisfaction. Fit indices for the full model are perfect because this full model isjust-identiﬁed. Fit indices for the mediating model without the direct paths wereadequate and the chi-square value was non-signiﬁcant, w2 (df ¼ 2, n ¼ 84) ¼ 2.28,
p 5 .31, CFI ¼ .99, RMSEA ¼ .04, thus highlighting that these direct paths were
non-signiﬁcant, as shown by the dashed lines in Figure 2. Bootstrapping estimations
were then used to determine if the mediation was signiﬁcant. Results revealed thatthe bias-corrected bootstrap 95% conﬁdence interval did not include zero [0.23;
2.77], suggesting that the mediation was signiﬁcant at p 5 .05. Finally, results were
the same when only examining participants who remained with their partner over the
10-month period (n ¼ 52), when excluding males from the analyses, or when couple
adjustment was included in the model for the 65 participants who were engaged atTime 1. Couple adjustment was not a signiﬁcant predictor of extradyadic sex when
included in the model (b ¼ .02, ns).
In sum, results of Study 3 supported our hypotheses. First, it was found that
attachment avoidance was positively associated with extradyadic sex involvement
over a 10-month period. Second, attachment anxiety was found to be unrelated to
extradyadic sex involvement over this period of time. In addition, all these results
were maintained after controlling for sexual satisfaction, desire, and couple
adjustment. Finally, results showed that concerns with partner’s desire forengagement and proximity fully mediated the relationship between attachment
avoidance and extradyadic sex involvement. Overall, the present ﬁndings provide
support for the predictive role of attachment avoidance in extradyadic sex
involvement and for the mediating role of concerns with partner’s desire forengagement and proximity in this association.
General discussion
The present ﬁndings lead to a number of implications. A ﬁrst implication is that therelationship between attachment avoidance and extradyadic sex was maintainedeven after controlling for sexual satisfaction and desire. Results showed that
attachment-related motives to engage in extradyadic sex did not overlap with sexualrelated reasons, thus supporting the fact that attachment plays a role in extradyadic
sex independently of one’s sexual desire and sexual satisfaction. This ﬁnding was
replicated in Study 3 within a prospective design. Such a result may imply that
motives for being unfaithful go far beyond sexual arousal and sexual satisfaction, as
one’s typical interpersonal functioning appears to characterize one’s likeliness toengage or not in extradyadic sex (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). These ﬁndings thus
support the idea that attachment and sexual systems are independent, but interrelate
to aﬀect a person’s motives for having sex (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007).
A second implication refers to the positive association between attachment
avoidance and extradyadic sex. The present ﬁndings suggest that avoidant
respondents are more likely to engage in extradyadic sex, and that they may do soin reaction to their concerns relative to their partner’s desire for engagement andproximity. Results of Study 3 were noteworthy, as people were not asked for thereasons for which they engaged in extradyadic sex. They were only asked about theextent to which they have been concerned with their partner’s desire for engagement
and proximity during a given period of time. Thus, the use of such a measureDownloaded By: [Beaulieu-Pelletier, Genevieve] At: 12:00 23 April 2011

Attachment & Human Development309

reduced the likelihood that the results obtained were the consequence of participants’
rationalized explanation for their extradyadic sex involvement (Buunk & Dijkstra,
2006), as they were less likely to be aware that their responses to this scale might berelated to their extradyadic sex behavior (as opposed to questionnaires asking
participants reasons for their unfaithfulness). Although it would have been stronger
to assess concerns with one’s partner desire for engagement and extradyadic sex intwo separate time points, the present results still highlight the fact that concerns withpartner’s desire for engagement is cross-sectionally related to extradyadic sex.
Conceptualizing extradyadic sex as a consequence of avoidant respondents’
irritation and concerns relative to their partner’s desire for engagement sheds somelight onto why individuals characterized by attachment avoidance may engage inextradyadic sex. For instance, they may not necessarily be more interested in having
many short-term partners or more inclined to satisfy their sexual desire and arousal.
Rather, they might use extradyadic sex to reduce their discomfort with the desire for
intimacy and engagement of their partner (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007; Stephan &Bachman, 1999). This proposal is in line with Allen and Baucom (2004) who foundthat avoidant individuals were more likely to report engaging in extradyadic sex forautonomy-related reasons. Individuals characterized by attachment avoidance who
feel that their partner wishes to get closer or to engage even more can become
irritated. They may need to ﬁnd a way to distance themselves and reduce theirproximity with their partner as a mean to lower their irritation (Baumeister, Vohs,
DeWall, & Zhang, 2007). Extradyadic sex may be one of the strategies used byindividuals characterized by attachment avoidance to feel less close to their partner,
which consequently helps them to regulate their irritation. However, the present
research does not allow us to conﬁrm that extradyadic sex actually leads to reduced
engagement and lower irritation. More empirical evidence is needed with respect tothis issue and diﬀerent methods and designs should be used to this eﬀect.
A third implication is that attachment anxiety was unrelated to all measures ofextradyadic sex. Over three samples composed of undergraduate and graduate
students and community-dwelling individuals, the relationship between attachment
anxiety and extradyadic sex intentions or involvement was assessed nine times with
six diﬀerent measures of extradyadic sex. Overall, we did not ﬁnd a single positive
association for this relationship across all three studies, even after controlling forsexual satisfaction, desire, couple adjustment, gender, and after the examination of
the interactions between attachment anxiety and gender and between attachment
anxiety and age. Furthermore, Study 3 even showed that there was a slight negative
correlation between attachment anxiety and extradyadic sex over time, although thisrelationship was not signiﬁcant. These results are in line with the theoretical point ofview that anxious individuals (because of their dependence, their fear of losing theirpartner or to be abandoned, and their commitment to their current romantic
relationship) are not likely to engage in extradyadic sexual intercourses, presumably
because this would be perceived as a potential threat to their primary relationship(Feeney & Noller, 1992; Simpson et al., 1999; Stackert & Bursik, 2003; Stephan &Bachman, 1999). Therefore, the present research contradicts past research (Allen &Baucom, 2004; Bogaert & Sadava, 2002; Cooper et al., 2006) that showed a positive
relationship between attachment anxiety and extradyadic sex. However, at thediﬀerence of these past studies (except for Cooper et al., 2006), we focused on theassessment of extradyadic sexual intercourses. Future research would do well toassess the relationship between attachment and other speciﬁc cases of extradyadic

310

G. Beaulieu-Pelletier et al.

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behavior that do not include extradyadic sexual intercourses, such as falling in loveor being emotionally involved with someone else than the primary partner.
Limitations and conclusions
The present research was limited in certain aspects. First, all measures were selfreported. Although we tried to reduce participants’ discomfort or reluctance toreport extradyadic sex incidents by making explicit our commitment to assuring
anonymity and conﬁdentiality, we cannot rule out the intervention of bias due toapprehension, as extradyadic sex is usually negatively perceived. Indirect sexual
extradyadic behavior indices might be needed in future research in order to conﬁrm
the present research ﬁndings (e.g., Gaillot & Baumeister, 2007). Future research may
also examine couples or multiple reporters in order to reduce the shared method
variance. A second limitation concerns the overrepresentation of women in Study 3.
Even if no diﬀerence were found when excluding male participants, a greater numberof men would have been required to test more precisely the mediation between
attachment and extradyadic sex and conduct gender comparison. A third limitationis the potential sample biases (students in Studies 1 and 3 and visitors of an
exhibition in Study 2), which limits the generalization of the results to the general
population. Future research should replicate the present ﬁnding in an unbiased
community-dwelling population. A fourth limitation is that the information whether
any participants were actually couples in Study 2 was not collected. It should be
noted, however, that most participants were not couples; many participants werewith friends or, when they were with their partner, it frequently happened that only
one of them responded to our questionnaire by the time the other attended anotherstand. Although we do not think that this bias unduly aﬀected the results of Study 2
by boosting the results (indeed, the correlations in Study 2 were even lower than in
Study 1), this limitation needs to be underscored. Finally, all three studies used acorrelational design, although Study 3 used a partial prospective design. Quasiexperimental designs are needed in order to replicate the present ﬁndings.
In sum, the present research made important contributions to the literature in
two areas. First, it provided evidence for the association between attachment
avoidance (but not attachment anxiety) and extradyadic sex, independently of sexrelated motives. Second, it oﬀered a deeper understanding of attachment, asavoidant respondents have been found to be more likely to engage in extradyadic sex
in reaction to their irritation and concerns with respect to their partner’s desire forengagement. This study sheds some light on the role of attachment-related motives inextradyadic sex.
Notes
1.

2.

The small number of males recruited in Study 3 probably reﬂects the small number ofmale students in the department of psychology at the establishment where they have been
recruited. Unfortunately, this did not allow us to statistically examine the role of gender inthis study or the potential interactions between gender and attachment. However, it
should be noted that results were virtually the same when males were excluded from theanalyses. Therefore, all participants were kept for all analyses.
A Conﬁrmatory Factorial Analysis examining the conceptual distinction between
attachment avoidance and concerns with one’s partner’s engagement revealed that they
were clearly distinct and should not be considered as overlapping constructs. Detailed
results are available from the ﬁrst author.

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