Attachment Styles and Coping Strategies of Adolescents: A Study on the Affordances Provided by Different Social Environments

The adolescent-environment interaction process is emerging as an important area of psychological research in the context of increased instances of maladjusted behaviour among adolescents. From this perspective, the relationships of adolescents with their significant others, and the strategies adopted to deal with surging stresses of everyday life deserves special attention. Equally crucial is adolescents’ perception of influential environments. To this end, the present study critically examines the effects of attachment styles and coping strategies of adolescents on perceived affordances of home and educational institution. The concept of affordances was originally proposed by Gibson (1966) and later popularized by Norman (1988) as perceived affordances. This study also examined the effects of developmental stages and gender of the adolescents on perceived affordances. A sample of 300 middle adolescents (150 boys and 150 girls) aged 14-16 years and 300 late adolescents (150 boys and 150 girls) aged 17-19 years responded to the Relationship Scales Questionnaire, the Coping Checklist-1, a scale for measuring perceived affordances and an information schedule. The obtained data were statistically treated using Multiple Analysis of Variance (MANOVA). Findings indicated that perceived affordances of home significantly varied as a function of both attachment styles and coping strategies, whereas the perceived affordances of educational institution varied only as a function of attachment styles. Moreover, differences in the perception of affordances of home and educational institution were found between the middle and late adolescents as well as between the adolescent boys and girls.