Attachment – Emotions Which Shape Development and Well-Functioning in Humans

Attachment is the evolutionarily-established process through which humans create bonds with others in order to receive care from them. The attachment system is treated as an emotion regulation device as well as a major stress regulatory system. The intergenerational transmission of attachment is one of the core hypotheses of attachment theory. As a new category, cultural attachment was established, referring to processes that allow culture and its symbols to provide psychological security when and individual is facing threat. Additionally, emotions and feelings could be comprised as "somatic markers" which act as signals guiding behaviour towards beneficial outcomes. Thus emotions are very important not only in everyday functioning but also in decision making processes. Relying on multidisciplinary evidence - from neuroscientific, developmental, evolutionary, and clinical sources it was suggested that somaticity, as a specific characteristic of attachment, has the adaptive function to modulate our inclination. In this context, the attachment is confirmed to indispensable emotion in human functioning.