ReviewWorld journal of psychiatry2021
Genetics of adult attachment: An updated review of the literature.
Review in World journal of psychiatry, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 24 citations in OpenAlex.
- Genetic Variants Associated With Resilience in Human and Animal Studies.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Pooled it
- The psychosocial matters: a call for attachment theory in kidney health research.Renal failure · 2026Article
- Attachment Problems and Mentalizing Capacity Relate to Parent-Child Informant Discrepancies in Female Adolescents with Borderline Personality Disorder.Child psychiatry and human development · 2026Article
- The fetus/infant - mother as a co-evolving dyadic system and the development of attachment styles: an active inference perspective.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Diagnostic Inclusion of Attachment Trauma: A Commentary on Farina and Schimmenti (2025).Clinical neuropsychiatry · 2025Article
- Genetic and environmental contributions to adult attachment styles: Evidence from the Minnesota Twin Registry.Journal of personality and social psychology · 2025Article
- Genetic Contributions on Attachment in Emerging Adults: Cumulative Effects of Serotonergic Polymorphisms.Journal of youth and adolescence · 2025Article
- Predicting attachment style from EEG data on the Flanker task.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Article
- A narrative on the neurobiological roots of attachment-system functioning.Communications psychology · 2024Review
- Genetic Contributions to Attachment Stability Over Time: the Roles of CRHR1 Polymorphisms.Journal of youth and adolescence · 2024Article
- A perspective-based analysis of attachment from prenatal period to second year postnatal life.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Review
- Influence of anxious attachment on the relationship between primary emotions and substance-related addictive behaviors.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
- Neurobiology of Disorganized Attachment: A Review of Primary Studies on Human Beings.Neuroscience insights · 2023Review
- Genetics of adult attachment and the endogenous opioid system.World journal of psychiatry · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
13 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Attachment style, which has been theorized to be rooted in childhood bonding experiences, influences adult cognitive, emotional and interpersonal functioning. Despite its relationship with early experiences, research indicates that the continuity of attachment style across childhood and adulthood is only partial, being a malleable tendency that is shaped throughout development, with an increasing influence of genetics, as it occurs in other cognitive and behavioral phenotypes. Genetic research indicates that up to 45% of the variability in anxious and 39% in avoidant adult attachment style could be explained by genetic causes, but the precise mechanisms remain unclear. A narrative review is conducted analyzing the existing literature regarding the implication of candidate genes related to oxytocin, dopaminergic pathways, serotonergic pathways and brain-derived neurotrophic factor in adult attachment, with both vulnerability and differential susceptibility approaches, yielding mixed results. We highlight the lack of genome-wide studies and the scarcity of epigenetic investigation. Based on the existing data, we conclude that the genetics of adult attachment is an area that requires further research to clarify its etiological role and that it should be preferably approached as an interaction between nature and nurture.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.