Relatedness is considered to be one of basic human needs essential for well-being, and stable, satisfying relationships are found to be important factor contributing to resilience across the lifespan. Attachments provide connections to others, starting from attachments to caregivers in childhood, shifting to peer-groups in adolescence, to attachments toward partners and eventually toward children in person's adulthood. According to attachment theory, young children within close relationships acquire "internal working models" that help them make sense of their environment, based on perception of people's availability and willingness to provide care and protection. These "working models" reflect on the way child will engage in social relationships and on the quality of his/her experiences in these relationships, which is usually described in terms of attachment styles. This review study aims to systematize research findings on connections between different attachment styles and resilience in different types of risk conditions, as well as to discuss differences in these connections. Furthermore, though attachment styles have typically been viewed as stable individual differences, recent work suggests that there might be considerable within-person variation in attachment security with different relational partners. Following that line of research, this review study explores factors that enhance flexibility of attachment styles and discusses practical implications of research findings.

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