Ability to Commit to Romantic Partners in Later Life Predicted by Childhood Bonds

People who had lower quality relationships with others in their childhood and adolescence are more likely to less commit to their romantic partners later in life, a new study has found. The study focused on 78 participants between the ages of 20 and 21 who had been studied their entire lives through the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation, reports Discovery News.

Psychologists used data from two previous experiments with participants.

One measured the quality of each participant's relationship with his or her care-giver as a 2-year-old, while another looked at his or her ability to resolve problems with best friends at age 16.

Most recently, scientists surveyed the same participants and their romantic partners of four or more months in order to measure each party's level of commitment to the relationship.

As predicted, participants with lower quality relationships with others in previous experiments were more likely to be the weak link in the relationship, while those with higher quality interactions earlier in life were more committed.

The study will be published in the journal Psychological Science next month.

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Source-ANI