Anxious Aspirations: Attachment Anxiety Fuels Status Strivings Through Intrasexual Competition

Striving for social status is a fundamental human motive, yet individuals vary considerably in their status-seeking tendencies. Drawing on attachment literature and life history theory, we propose that attachment anxiety drives status pursuit through heightened intrasexual competition. Across six preregistered studies (N = 4,456) spanning five countries, we found that attachment anxiety, but not attachment avoidance, predicts stronger status strivings. This relationship is mediated by intrasexual competition—competing with same-sex rivals—rather than, as previously documented, by materialism or general competitiveness. Experimental evidence confirmed causality: inducing attachment anxiety (vs. avoidance) increased desire for high-status cars and houses through heightened intrasexual competition. A moderation-of-process design demonstrated that experimentally manipulating intrasexual competition correspondingly enhanced or reduced the effect of attachment anxiety on status strivings, but only for high-status possessions. These effects held for both men and women. Our findings show that anxiously attached individuals pursue status to compensate for relational insecurities, and they do so by competing with same-sex rivals. This research extends attachment theory to status pursuit and clarifies whether, when, and why individual differences in attachment patterns predict people’s status strivings.