“…The majority of studies to date have not found gender differences with regard to distributions of secure, dismissing and preoccupied attachment representations, either as assessed via the AAI (Allen, Hauser, & Borman -Spurrell, 1996 ;Allen et al, 2004 ;Bernier et al, 2005 ; Cassidy, & Waters, 2006 ;Scharf, 2001 ;Seiffge -Krenke, 2006 ;Spangler & Zimmermann, 1999 ;Zimmermann, 2004 ), or via self -report measures of attachment style (Hazan & Shaver, 1987 ;Schindler et al, 2005 ;Weimer et al, 2004 ). Studies that have found gender effects indicate that males may display higher levels of dismissing and deactivating tendencies, whereas females may demonstrate higher levels of preoccupation (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991 ;Kobak et al, 1993 ;Larose & Bernier, 2001 ).…”