4 min · free · no account

Attachment Style Test (ECR Two-Dimension Model)

Twenty items placing you on the two axes attachment research actually uses — anxiety about abandonment and avoidance of closeness — rather than sorting you into one of four boxes.

Original scale

Items: 20
Time: 4 min
Scales: 3
Scale: 5-pt

Free, no account needed. Your answers are not shared.

You'll find out: How much you fear abandonment and how much closeness itself makes you flinch — the two dimensions research actually uses.

Want to understand what you’re about to do? The sections below explain what this assessment measures, where the questions came from, and what you’ll see at the end. Already decided? The start button is up top.

What this is really asking

Attachment style is usually presented as four types: secure, anxious, avoidant, disorganized. That presentation is a simplification of the underlying model, and the simplification loses most of the information. The research measures two independent continuous dimensions. Attachment anxiety is how much you fear abandonment and monitor a relationship for signs of it. Attachment avoidance is how uncomfortable closeness and dependence themselves feel. The four familiar names are just quadrant labels applied after the fact.

The difference is not academic. Someone scoring moderately high on both dimensions and someone scoring at the extreme on both would land in the same quadrant and be told the same thing, while having quite different experiences. Someone sitting near the middle of both axes gets called secure, which is accurate, but so does someone genuinely low on both — and those two people need different things. Reporting positions on two axes preserves what the quadrant label discards.

A third score here, secure base, covers the positive capacity directly: whether you can depend on someone and be depended on without either of those feeling like a threat. It tends to move independently of the other two, and it is the dimension most responsive to the relationship you are currently in.

Attachment patterns originate in early caregiving but they are not fixed by it. The research on earned security is reasonably clear that a sustained relationship with a consistently responsive partner shifts measured attachment over time. Your score describes your current pattern, not a verdict on your childhood.

The parts it pulls apart

Attachment Anxiety — Fear of abandonment, need for reassurance
Attachment Avoidance — Discomfort with closeness and dependence
Secure Base — Trust that connection survives distance

What lands on your screen at the end

You get your position on both dimensions plus the secure base score, charted together, with an interpretation of what your specific combination means for how you behave when a relationship becomes uncertain.

The result names the quadrant your position falls in, because that vocabulary is useful, while showing where within it you sit — near the boundary or deep in the corner. Anxiety and avoidance are charted inversely; secure base is not.

Where these questions came from

ECR (Experiences in Close Relationships) two-dimension model

Brennan, K. A., Clark, C. L., & Shaver, P. R. (1998). Self-report measurement of adult attachment. In Attachment Theory and Close Relationships, 46–76. Fraley, R. C., et al. (2000). ECR-R. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(2), 350–365.

This version: An original 20-item scale built on the ECR's two-dimension structure, with an added secure-base dimension. Not the ECR or ECR-R, and scores are not interchangeable with them.

For self-reflection and education. No account is required and your answers are not shared.

Common questions

What are the four attachment styles?

Secure, anxious-preoccupied, dismissive-avoidant and fearful-avoidant. They are labels for quadrants formed by two underlying dimensions: attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance. Low on both is secure, high anxiety with low avoidance is anxious-preoccupied, low anxiety with high avoidance is dismissive-avoidant, and high on both is fearful-avoidant. The dimensions are the measurement; the four names are a summary of it.

Why measure two dimensions instead of assigning a type?

Because a cut-point throws away how far into a quadrant you are, and that distance matters. Two people can be labelled anxious-preoccupied while one sits just over the line and the other is at the extreme, and their experiences are not comparable. Placing you on both axes keeps that information and also handles the many people who sit near the middle, whom a type system has to round off in one direction.

Can attachment style change?

Yes. Attachment patterns form in early relationships but the research on earned security shows they shift with sustained experience — a long relationship with a consistently responsive partner reliably moves measured attachment toward security, and therapy can do the same. Roughly a quarter of people show a meaningful change in classification over several years.

What does anxious-avoidant mean?

Scoring high on both dimensions at once — often called fearful-avoidant or disorganized. It describes wanting closeness and fearing it simultaneously, which produces the approach-then-withdraw pattern that is confusing to be on either side of. It is the least common of the four positions and the one most associated with inconsistent or frightening early caregiving.