Fisher’s 4 Temperaments and Attachment: The Attachment Project’s Findings

Do you notice that you tend to approach life more carefully than others? How about more analytically, or more enthusiastically? Have you ever wondered whether or not that has something to do with your attachment style?

So did we – so we decided to find out.

Using Fisher’s 4 temperament theory, we investigated the link between temperament and attachment styles¹. We’ll dive into the results soon, but first, we’ll talk a bit more about Fisher’s 4 temperament theory and what it means for you.

Fisher’s 4 Temperaments

Fisher’s 4 temperament theory categorizes temperament in, you guessed it, 4 ways! What’s really special about this theory is that it’s based in neurochemical systems – each dimension of temperament correlates with a particular neurotransmitter or hormone, and Fisher and colleagues were able to actually see this in the brain.

These are the 4 temperament dimensions, their corresponding neurochemicals, and descriptions of each one based on Fisher’s Temperament Inventory:

According to Fisher’s theory, if you are driven mainly by dopamine then you have a more Curious/Energetic temperament, if by serotonin then you have a more Cautious/Social Norm Compliant temperament, and so on according to the table above.

Fisher also states that we tend to be attracted to people with similar dopamine and serotonin function, but complementary testosterone and estrogen/oxytocin systems. Since our scores on Fisher’s 4 temperaments can impact our choice of partners, we were curious whether they also related to our attachment styles.

Temperament and Attachment: Our Findings

We surveyed over 26,000 people to find their scores on Fisher’s 4 temperaments and the attachment measures of anxiety and avoidance. Although the correlations we found were small, our huge sample size allows us to consider the results meaningful.

Romantic avoidance and romantic anxiety were both slightly negatively correlated with all of the 4 temperaments, except for in one case.

For the most part, the higher people scored in either romantic avoidance or romantic anxiety, or indeed both, the less curious, less cautious, less analytical, and less prosocial they were.

The exception: people scoring highly in romantic anxiety were more likely to score highly on the Prosocial/Empathic domain.

Are Temperament and Attachment Related?

First, we’ll take a look at avoidance. Our results suggest that those with stronger temperament traits, no matter which ones, tend to be less romantically avoidant. This might seem quite surprising, particularly for the Analytical/Tough-Minded group whose characteristics may seem to overlap with avoidant traits.

We could theorize that this is because secure individuals have a stronger sense of self, formed by the positive interactions and ability to grow and explore that they experienced in infancy.

This could also be affecting those with high romantic anxiety – but why was romantic anxiety positively correlated with the Prosocial/Empathic temperament?

Previous studies have found that attachment anxiety is associated with some measures of empathy, particularly personal distress during an emergency; this is where someone might feel discomfort when witnessing another person’s pain², ³. It’s theorized that this is because attachment anxiety comes with heightened emotional sensitivity and feelings of helplessness, leading to high distress when things feel out of control. Other measures of empathy that correspond with warmth and understanding are typically correlated with secure attachment styles, likely because this kind of empathy was more often modelled for them in childhood.

Another reason for the correlation between anxiety and the Prosocial/Empathic temperament could be the component of imagination. A recent study found that romantic anxiety was a strong predictor for maladaptive daydreaming – the tendency to daydream so often and so deeply that it interferes with daily life⁴. Part of the Prosocial/Empathic temperament measure reflects on someone’s ability to imagine things vividly and their emotional experiences of books and films, so it makes sense that somebody with attachment anxiety might score more highly on this measure.

Conclusions

So, could your attachment style be related to Fisher’s 4 temperaments – and by extension, your neurochemical systems? We need more studies to confirm, but our results suggest that, yes, your attachment style and temperament may interact.

Since temperaments are thought to be biological and pretty stable over a lifetime, yet attachment styles can change depending on our experiences and tend to shift toward security as we age, it would be interesting to gain a deeper understanding of their connection. This may also imply that the Prosocial/Empathic temperament comes first, potentially predisposing someone to greater attachment anxiety – if this were to be the case, how could we provide extra support to those people who want to move towards attachment security?

Lots of questions remain, but our findings have opened up an interesting potential avenue for further research in the attachment field.

References

1. Fisher HE, Island HD, Rich J, Marchalik D, Brown LL. Four broad temperament dimensions: description, convergent validation correlations, and comparison with the Big Five. Frontiers in psychology. 2015 Aug 3;6:1098.
2. Joireman JA, Needham TL, Cummings AL. Relationships between dimensions of attachment and empathy. North American Journal of Psychology. 2002 Apr 1;4(1):63-80.
3. Britton PC, Fuendeling JM. The relations among varieties of adult attachment and the components of empathy. The Journal of social psychology. 2005 Sep 1;145(5):519-30.
4. Raj R. Dreaming to Cope: Exploring the Relationship Between Attachment Styles and Maladaptive Daydreaming. International Journal of Interdisciplinary Approaches in Psychology. 2025 May 1;3(5):1160-8.