ABSTRACT
During the last three decades, social psycholo gists have attempted to understand how adult relationships function and to delineate the source of individual differences in the way people relate to others. In the present study, I focus on one source of individual differences-adult attachment style-and examine its association with an important relational process-the experience of trust in a relationship. The study of the attachmenttrust link is highly significant, because it brings together two important processes in relationships, each with its own well-developed body of research and theory. Moreover, it provides a theoretical framework to understand how people appraise and react to partner behaviors that reinforce or violate the trust they feel toward him or her, and thereby to explain the construction of the sense of trust in a relationship-what would seem to be a necessary condition for the development of secure, intimate, and satisfactory relationships.
