Temperament and Attachment as a Predictor of Romantic Love among Adults

Objectives of the present study were to find out the relationship among the composite scores of temperament, attachment and perception of romantic love among adults in Lahore, Pakistan. Urdu translated version of the Structure of Temperament Questionnaire-Compact (Trofimova, 2010), the Revised Adult Attachment Scale (Collins, 1996), and the Perception of Romantic Love Scale (Anjum & Batool) was administered on the N = 500 participants (was justified and calculated online through A-prior sample size (Soper, 2016) with the age range of 19 to 60 (M = 20.06, SD = 5.63). Results showed highly significant positive relationship among the composite scores of temperament, attachment and perception of romantic love. Findings also revealed that the temperament, attachment, education, and the experience of romantic love were the significant predictors of perception of romantic love. Implications of the study were discussed in the cultural context of Lahore, Pakistan.

avoidant, and anxious that had previously been studied in children's attachments to their caregivers, demonstrating that attachment styles are stable across the lifespan.
Feeny, Noller and Patty (1993) also reported that individuals who were securely attached with their parents and friends in childhood enjoy more romantic relationship as an adult and have high self-esteem.The children, who were separated from their parents in childhood, avoid the romantic relationship in their adulthood.Therefore, Anxiousambivalent individuals avoid the strong commitment with their partners.
Attachment patterns depend on the quality of infant and caregivers' interaction which is learned but researchers (Trofimova, 2010;Konstan, 2014) revealed that the quality of infant, caregivers and adult relationships influenced by another variable that is temperament.Temperament refers to the individual differences, which are pertinent and stable in nature.It helps to intensify the emotional reactions and selfregulation that increase the activity level and attention span.It has a strong biological determination.Its characteristics can be observed from the first weeks of life (Ruch, Angleitner, &Strelau, 1991).It retains the relative stability during a long life period, consistency of appearance in various situations, spontaneity, and individual's unawareness of these particularities of behavior, independence of the content (i.e.motivation and goal) of activity.It has high correlation of temperament with the properties of nervous system and hormonal regulation.It encloses the significant inheritance of some of temperamental characteristics; it defines dynamical (energetic) and regulatory (emotional) aspect of behavior.
An extensive scientific literature (Baumeister, & Bratslavsky, 1999;Dienerr, Oishi, & Lucas, 2003;Simpson, 1990;Sroufe& Waters, 1997;Rothbart& Bates, 2000;Ahuvia, Batra, & Bagozzi, 2014) is available have the consensus that romantic couples "live happily ever after" then why not hypothetically true, happy ending notion would cure the deterioration of marital institution, infidelity, extra marital affairs, empty relationship, separation and divorce?It might be happened that researchers overlook the perception of romantic love relationship with biological and social variables like temperament and attachment which is the main purpose of this study.

Objectives
1. To find out the relationship among temperament, attachment and romantic love 2. To explore the predictors of romantic love i.e.
temperament, attachment and demographic variables (gender, education, profession and experience of romantic love).

Hypotheses
1.There will be a correlation in temperament, attachment and romantic love.2. Temperament, attachment and demographic variables will predict the romantic love.

Method Sample
Purposive sampling technique was used.Sample N = 500 (justified and calculated online through A-prior sample size (Soper, 2016) was taken (50 % men & 50 % women) from the different universities of Lahore such as Punjab University, Government College University, University of Lahore, Lahore University of management, Lahore College for Women University, and National College of arts.Data of the 40 participants were deleted during initial screening as it was incomplete, negatively or positively skewed and created the outlier.Therefore, final analysis was run on the N = 500.Age range of the participants varying from 19 to 60 (M = 20.06,SD = 5.63).Their education level was from BSc (hons) to PhD.

Instruments Demographic Form
Demographic details such as age, gender, education, profession, marital status, and experience of romantic love was recorded on the demographic form.
The Structure of Temperament Questionnaire-Compact (STQ-77) Structure of Temperament Questionnaire-Compact (STQ-77) was originally developed by Rusalov and Trofimova (2007);Trofimova (2010).It was translated from the target language (English) to source language (Urdu) for the current study by the researcher to follow the stander procedure of forward-back translation (Brislin, 1976).It refers to the individual differences, which are pertinent and stable in nature.It helps to intensify the emotional reactions and self-regulation that increase the activity level and attention span.It measures dynamical properties of behaviors which are consistent across situations.It is a selfreported inventory that consists of 77 items having 13 subscales.

The Revised Adult Attachment Scale (RAAS)
Revised Adult Attachment Scale was originally developed by Collins (1996) in English language and translated into Urdu language through forward-back translation procedure (Brislin, 1976)in the present study to measure the attachment patterns of adults.Originally it consisted of 18 items.It has 10 positively worded and 8 negatively worded items.It has three subscales naming secure attachment, dependent attachment, and anxious/anxiety attachment, having six items in each subscale.It has 5 point likert scale response pattern ranging from: not at all characteristics of me = 1 and very much characteristics of me = 5.Negatively worded items were reversed scored and the total score was sum of responses to each item.High scores indicated the high attachment pattern on the particular subscale and low scores mean low level of attachment.Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient of the original scale was α = .92while on current sample it is achieved as α = 0.88.Composite score of the RAAS was used instead of its three subscales.

Procedure
After seeking permission from the relevant departments of the different universities of Lahore, Pakistan (see sample section for detail), written consent of the participants were taken.Instructions regarding how to fill the instruments were delivered to them and requested to complete the four scales without missing any single item.It was based on paper pencil method.This procedure took average 25 to 30 minutes to complete the whole process.Participants were thanked for their cooperation.
Results in table 4 indicate that those individuals who have 18 years of education showed more positive attitude towards romantic love as compared to those participants who have 14 to 16 years of education.In the same way those individuals who have experienced romantic love significantly predict the romantic love as compared to those who never experienced romantic love.

Discussion
The present study sought to assess the relationship among temperament, attachment and romantic love among adults in Lahore, Pakistan.Results showed that there were highly significant positive relationship among the composite scores of temperament, attachment and the perception of romantic love.Results of the current study were remained consisted with the previous literature (Holmes &Rahe, 1967;Bartels, & Zeki, 2000;Ulmer, 2014).Gonzaga, Turner, Keltner, Campos, and Altemus (2006) found that the romantic love, temperament and attachment strengthens the emotional commitment, stimulate the sexual desires and intensifies the reproduction urge.Romantic relationship displays different sorts of verbal and non-verbal communications, feelings, long and short term commitments (marriage & romantic relationship without marriage) related outcomes.Interestingly, composite scores of perception of romantic love has the highly significant but negative relationship with experience of romantic love, which indicated that those individuals who have the experience of romantic love reported highly significant positive attitude towards perception of romantic love as compared to those individuals who have not yet experienced it.It might happen as the romantic love relationship is considered as highest value of human being (Schutz, 1958;Harrison, & Shortall, 2011;Kokab & Ajmal, 2012;Wood, 2014) because the researchers found that the mutual and fulfilling relationship of romantic love strengthens the sense of joy, happiness, excitement and satisfaction among partners (Marshall, Bejanyan, Castro, & Lee, 2013).As Teeruthroy and Bhowon (2012) found that the romantic love inculcates the generosity and altruism in lovers.
A significant positive relationship was also found between education and perception of romantic love, which showed that the increased level of the education induced the positive attitude towards perception of romantic love.It might have happened as higher education can bring significant benefits to the individual and the society, not only through higher employment opportunities and income but also through enhanced emotional maturity, skills, improved social status, and access to networks (Phye, Schutz, & Pekrun, 2011).Moreover, significant positive relation was also found between the profession and perception of romantic love (Marshall, Bejanyan, Castro, & Lee, 2013), as profession helps in self-regulation, economic stability, and improves the social status.A non-significant relationship was found among age, gender, marital status and perception of romantic love scale.
A highly significant relationship found among the Revised Adult Attachment Styles and demographic variables such as gender, education, profession, marital status, and experience of romantic love.Profession and the marital status has the highly significant positive relationship with the attachment styles while there were highly significant negative relationship found among the attachment styles, gender and education.It means women and those individuals who have high level of education have the positive attitude towards perception of romantic love as compared to men and those individual who have comparatively low level of education.Brummett (2010) reported that parents have more influence on individuals as compared to friends.Social networking strongly influenced the commitment of romantic relationship.Aron et al, (2005) found that securely attached lovers experienced positive changes in personalities and romantic love flourishes their sense of humor.Partners acquire emotional maturity and stability and obtain self-satisfaction and enjoy elevated and stable moods through secure attachment.
Researchers explored (Giddens, 2013;Lewis, 2013;Cleary, 2015) that East Asians experience more simultaneous positive and negative emotions during insecure and dependent attachment as compared to Western people.Insecure attachment in romantic love reduces the mutual activities of the partners and lovers become irritated and jealous from each other.They experience hot and chill fleshes, low appetites, sleep disturbances, and disorientation in daily routine activities.Their academic grades fluctuate from low to moderate level.They have suicidal ideation and attempting it in extreme cases.These factors decrease the quality of relationship (Fisher, Aron, Mashek, Li, & Brown, 2002;Marazziti & Canale, 2004;Mikulincer & Goodman, 2006).Al-Krenawi and Jackson (2014) researched that in collectivistic cultures, suitability of the partner is based on social, emotional, economical, moral and religious support.Marriage is supposed to provide the economic and social security.A negative and non-significant relationship was found among the composite scores of Structure of Temperament Questioner-Compact and all the demographic variables such as age, gender, education, marital status, profession and experience of romantic love.
To find out the predictors of romantic love is another objective of the present study.Findings revealed that the temperament, attachment and profession were the significant positive predictors of perception of romantic love while the experience of romantic love was the significant negative predictors of perception of romantic love, which means experience of romantic love positively, affects the attitude of individual as compared to those people who have not experienced it yet.
Love Scale (PRLS) Perception of Romantic Love Scale is developed by the researcher (Anjum & Batool) for the current research.It composed of 48 items having 7 subscales measuring different aspects of romantic love such as Emotional, General, Spiritual, Cognitive, Sexual, Marital and Behavioral components of romantic love.It has5 point likert type response format 1 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly agree.Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the total scale and subscales such as Emotional, General, Spiritual, Cognitive, Sexual, Marital, and Behavioral was α =.91, .78,.69,.74,.74,.76,70, .69,.59respectively.Test-retest and Splithalf reliability of the Perception of Romantic Love Scale was.89 and .85.Cut of score was determined through mean, high scores on Perception of Romantic Love Scale mean positive attitude about romantic love and low scores indicates non-favorable attitude.Composite score of the Perception of Romantic Love Scale was used instead of its seven subscales.
and Percentages of Demographic Variables (N = 500)