Abstract

The present study was designed to explore gender differences concerning avoidance and anxiety characteristic of adult attachment, romantic love, and personality traits. Qeustionnaires on the Adult Romantic Attachment, STLS and Big Five traits were administered to 540 undgergraduates comprising 270 heterosexual couples. Results indicated that women marked than men higher scores on anxiety, with no gender difference in avoidance. Also, men and women had similar scores on each subscale of STLS which had a negative correlation with avoidance and anxiety. Self ratings and meta-perceptions of Big Five were higher for men than for Women and vice versa for ratings of ideal and current partners. Further, each of Big Five, regardless of the type of perceptions, had a negative correlation with avoidance and anxiety. For men, however, those correlations with avoidance were larger than those with anxiety. For women, self-peceptions and meta-perceptions of Big Five related more to anxiety than avoidance, whereas it was reversed for ratings of ideal and current partners. These gender differences were discussed in the contexts of interpersonal relationships.