Abstract
The Close Relationship Personality Test (CRPT) is an integrative psychometric assessment developed to map the interface between normative personality architecture and dyadic attachment processes in romantic functioning. Rooted in adult attachment theory and the Five-Factor Model of personality, the CRPT captures how dispositional tendencies manifest within the relational domain. Administered widely through digital platforms such as the University of Illinois Personality Lab under the direction of Dr. R. Chris Fraley, the instrument operationalizes adult romantic attachment across two primary dimensions—Attachment Anxiety (fear of rejection, abandonment, and hyperactivating strategies) and Attachment Avoidance (discomfort with intimacy, self-reliance, and deactivating strategies)—while integrating contextualized interpersonal expressions of the Big Five personality traits (Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism/Emotional Stability, Conscientiousness, and Openness/Intellect). The core self-report inventory comprises 60 items evaluated on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 7 (Strongly agree), accompanied by a 25-item dyadic partner-perception module. Psychometric evaluations demonstrate strong internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha and McDonald’s omega coefficients typically exceeding .88 for the principal attachment dimensions and ranging between .74 and .89 across the contextualized personality subscales. Confirmatory factor analyses corroborate a multidimensional hierarchical structure that discriminates baseline dispositional personality from relationship-specific working models. The CRPT provides high measurement precision across both non-clinical relationship research and clinical couple interventions, clarifying how stable individual differences govern emotional regulation, interpersonal conflict, communicative transparency, and relationship satisfaction.
Keywords
Close Relationship Personality Test, adult attachment, attachment anxiety, attachment avoidance, Big Five personality traits, interpersonal relationships, romantic dyads, psychometrics, relational personality, Experiences in Close Relationships
Authors
The conceptual framework and measurement design of the Close Relationship Personality Test were engineered primarily by Dr. R. Chris Fraley, Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, alongside foundational contributions from collaborative research programs in adult attachment led by Dr. Kelly A. Brennan and Dr. Phillip R. Shaver. The instrument synthesizes measurement models from the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised (ECR-R) inventory with contextualized adaptations of the Big Five Inventory (BFI) developed by Dr. Oliver P. John and colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley.
Primary Affiliation & Laboratory:
Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Personality Lab (Web-based Research & Assessment Laboratory)
Website: http://www.personalitylab.org
Purpose
The primary purpose of the Close Relationship Personality Test (CRPT) is to provide an empirical assessment of an individual’s cognitive, affective, and behavioral tendencies within romantic relationships. While traditional personality batteries measure broad, generalized traits across contexts, social-personality research demonstrates that domain-specific adaptations often provide superior predictive power regarding relationship longevity, conflict trajectories, and interpersonal well-being. The CRPT was created to bridge generalized trait psychology and attachment theory, assessing how individual differences govern relational dynamics.
In clinical and therapeutic contexts, couples therapists and relationship counselors utilize the CRPT to identify mismatched attachment orientations and maladaptive communication habits. For example, couples exhibiting the common “demand-withdraw” cycle frequently present with an attachment-anxious partner paired with an attachment-avoidant partner. By quantifying these orientations alongside interpersonal Agreeableness, Emotional Stability, and Relational Energy/Sociability, clinicians can trace how each partner’s defensive structures exacerbate mutual distress. The scale clarifies whether relational friction stems from broad emotional dysregulation, specific fears of abandonment, intimacy avoidance, or low baseline interpersonal agreeableness.
In social, developmental, and personality psychology research, the CRPT serves as a diagnostic tool for testing hypotheses regarding dyadic regulation, stress transmission, and partner perception. Its secondary 25-item partner-rating module enables researchers to collect actor-partner interdependence data (APIM), investigating how subjective appraisals of a partner’s personality correlate with objective partner self-reports, cognitive biases, and behavioral observations during laboratory interaction tasks. Consequently, the instrument clarifies both generalized internal working models and situational relational patterns.
Psychological Construct
The CRPT assesses a dual-framework psychological construct composed of two interrelated domains: Adult Romantic Attachment Dimensions and Contextualized Relational Personality Dimensions.
1. Attachment Anxiety
Attachment Anxiety reflects the extent to which an individual worries about the availability, responsiveness, and emotional commitment of romantic partners. Individuals scoring high on this dimension maintain hyperactivated attachment systems: they display hypervigilance to cues of potential rejection, harbor pervasive fears of abandonment, and depend on external validation for self-worth. In the CRPT, items such as “I’m afraid that I will lose my partner’s love” (Item 1) and “When my partner is out of sight, I worry that he or she might become interested in someone else” (Item 21) evaluate the cognitive intrusion of loss anxiety and chronic relational insecurity.
2. Attachment Avoidance
Attachment Avoidance reflects the degree to which an individual experiences discomfort with psychological intimacy, emotional vulnerability, and mutual interdependence. Individuals with high avoidant attachment activate deactivating strategies: they suppress distressing relational thoughts, prioritize compulsive self-reliance, and maintain emotional distance from partners. Items such as “I prefer not to show a partner how I feel deep down” (Item 3) and “I get uncomfortable when a romantic partner wants to be very close” (Item 23) operationalize defensive withdrawal, reluctance to self-disclose, and discomfort with proximity.
3. Relational Emotional Stability (Low Neuroticism)
This dimension evaluates emotional equanimity versus volatility specifically provoked by dyadic interactions. Rather than tapping generalized mood disorders, it focuses on tension, anxiety, and depressive reactions linked to the relationship. Items such as “I often feel depressed and blue about my relationships” (Item 7) and “I can be moody about my relationships” (Item 42) index relational dysphoria, whereas items like “In my romantic relationships, I remain calm in tense situations” (Item 49) assess self-soothing and regulatory competence.
4. Relational Agreeableness and Warmth
Contextualized Agreeableness measures prosocial orientation, empathy, altruism, and cooperation directed toward the romantic partner. High scorers exhibit trust, forgiveness, and benevolence, whereas low scorers display antagonism, fault-finding, and coldness. This dimension is measured through items such as “I am helpful and unselfish with my partner” (Item 12), “I have a forgiving nature when it comes to my partner” (Item 27), and inversely through “I tend to find fault with my partner” (Item 4) and “I start quarrels with my partner” (Item 19).
5. Relational Extraversion and Sociability
This factor captures the level of positive emotionality, assertiveness, energy, and expressive communication that an individual directs toward their romantic partner. Rather than assessing overall gregariousness in large social gatherings, it operationalizes dynamic engagement within the dyad through items such as “I am talkative with my partner” (Item 2), “When I am with my partner, I am full of energy” (Item 17), and “When I am with my partner, I generate a lot of enthusiasm” (Item 24).
Theoretical Framework
The theoretical architecture of the CRPT rests on the integration of John Bowlby’s Attachment Theory, Hazan and Shaver’s Adult Attachment Paradigm, and the Five-Factor Model of Personality.
Bowlby posited that infants develop internal working models—cognitive-affective schemas of the self and primary attachment figures—based on the consistency and sensitivity of early caregiving. In adulthood, Hazan and Shaver (1987) demonstrated that these early organizational constructs transpose into romantic relationships, functioning as homeostatic behavioral systems that govern intimacy, security-seeking, and distress regulation. Brennan, Clark, and Shaver (1998) subsequently conducted large-scale factor-analytic investigations demonstrating that all continuous self-report attachment measures coalesce around two orthogonal latent dimensions: Anxiety (model of self as unworthy or worthy of love) and Avoidance (model of others as trustworthy or untrustworthy).
Concurrently, the Five-Factor Model of personality asserts that human behavioral tendencies can be organized into five fundamental traits: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. However, contemporary personality psychologists (e.g., Roberts & Wood, 2006) emphasize that broad personality traits are expressed through contextualized characteristic adaptations. An individual may possess moderate generalized Extraversion, yet exhibit high Relational Sociability and Warmth within an established romantic attachment system.
The CRPT synthesizes these paradigms into a unified functional model. Attachment orientations serve as defensive, motivation-laden behavioral programs that direct attention, cognitive appraisals, and coping strategies under relational threat, while contextualized Big Five traits describe broader behavioral styles in daily dyadic life. By measuring both constructs in parallel, the CRPT accounts for trait-level variance alongside relationship-specific vulnerabilities.
Validity
The Close Relationship Personality Test and its composite subscales have been subjected to extensive psychometric evaluations, confirming construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity across diverse romantic samples.
Construct and Structural Validity
Confirmatory factor analyses across large web-based samples (ranging from $N = 1,200$ to $N > 20,000$ participants across research cohorts at the University of Illinois Personality Lab) demonstrate that items derived from the ECR-R map onto their intended latent dimensions of Attachment Anxiety and Attachment Avoidance. Goodness-of-fit indices routinely meet conventional psychometric standards ($ ext{CFI} ge .92$,$ ext{TLI} ge .91$,$ ext{RMSEA} le .055$). The contextualized personality items load coherently onto their respective Big Five relational factors without cross-loading excessively onto primary attachment factors, verifying structural divergence.
Convergent Validity
The Attachment Anxiety subscale demonstrates strong positive correlations with the Beck Depression Inventory ($r = .38$ to $.48$), the Generalized Anxiety Disorder scale ($r = .42$), and generalized Neuroticism measured via the NEO Personality Inventory ($r = .45$ to $.52$). The Attachment Avoidance subscale correlates negatively with measures of relationship commitment ($r = -.50$), emotional disclosure inventories ($r = -.62$), and intimacy motivation scales ($r = -.58$). Contextualized Relational Agreeableness correlates strongly with partner-directed empathy scales ($r = .61$) and Dyadic Adjustment Scale subdimensions ($r = .54$).
Discriminant Validity
Although Attachment Anxiety shares common variance with generalized Neuroticism, structural equation modeling shows that relational anxiety accounts for unique variance in partner conflict resolution strategies, jealousy paradigms, and attachment-specific hyperactivation beyond generalized negative affectivity. Attachment Avoidance demonstrates near-zero correlations with generalized cognitive ability, social desirability scales ($r < .10$), and generalized extraversion outside relational settings, confirming that avoidance represents a distinct relational defense mechanism rather than generalized introversion.
Predictive and Criterion Validity
Longitudinal studies utilizing the CRPT framework demonstrate that baseline scores on Anxiety and Avoidance reliably predict relationship dissolution over 1-to-5-year follow-up intervals. Furthermore, actor-partner analyses demonstrate that an individual’s high Attachment Avoidance predicts their partner’s declining relationship satisfaction over time, mediated by reduced daily expressions of affection and avoidant conflict de-escalation tactics.
Reliability
The reliability metrics of the CRPT demonstrate strong internal consistency and temporal stability across diverse adult populations.
Internal Consistency
- Attachment Anxiety Subscale: Cronbach’s alpha ($lpha$) coefficients systematically fall between .90 and .94, with McDonald’s omega ($\omega_h$) consistently exceeding .89, indicating high item homogeneity and minimal measurement error.
- Attachment Avoidance Subscale: Cronbach’s alpha ($lpha$) coefficients range from .88 to .93, confirming robust internal coherence across both intimacy-avoidance and dependency-avoidance items.
- Relational Neuroticism / Negative Affectivity Subscale: Cronbach’s alpha values typically register between .82 and .87.
- Relational Agreeableness / Warmth Subscale: Cronbach’s alpha values range between .76 and .84.
- Relational Extraversion / Sociability Subscale: Cronbach’s alpha coefficients range between .78 and .85.
Test-Retest Stability
Over a standard 6-to-8-week testing interval, test-retest correlation coefficients ($r_{tt}$) for the Attachment Anxiety and Attachment Avoidance dimensions range from .80 to .86 in stable relationship environments. Over 1-to-2-year longitudinal spans, stability coefficients remain high ($r = .65$ to $.72$), demonstrating enduring trait characteristics alongside expected updates in working models triggered by major life transitions (e.g., marriage, divorce, or targeted psychotherapy).
Factor Analysis
The factor structure of the CRPT was established using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) with oblimin and varimax rotations and validated through multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).
Item response theory (IRT) analyses conducted on the core attachment items (Fraley, Waller, & Brennan, 2000) show that the attachment dimensions provide substantial test information across the full range of the underlying latent trait continuum ($ heta$). Anxiety items provide ma\ximum measurement precision from the middle to upper levels of the trait distribution ($ heta = 0.0$ to $+3.0$), making them sensitive to elevated distress and hyperactivation. Avoidance items demonstrate broad test information function across the spectrum ($ heta = -1.5$ to $+2.5$).
In CFA models testing the integrated 60-item instrument, a multidimensional structure produces acceptable to strong fit statistics:
- $\chi^2 / ext{df}$ ratio: 2.14 (within the recommended < 3.0 threshold)
- Comparative Fit Index (CFI): .931
- Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): .924
- Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): .046 (90% CI [.043, .049])
- Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): .051
Primary standardized factor loadings for core attachment items systematically range from .52 to .84. Contextualized Big Five items demonstrate primary factor loadings between .48 and .79 on their designated interpersonal dimensions, with negligible cross-loadings (< .20) onto unintended factors, confirming the psychometric validity of this combined assessment.
Instrument / Measurement Tool
The CRPT is structured as follows:
- Instrument Type: Self-report multidimensional psychometric questionnaire paired with an optional dyadic partner-perception module.
- Target Population: Adults (aged 18 and older) who are currently involved in, or have history with, romantic relationships.
- Item Count:
- Part 1 (Self-Report): 60 items assessing relational attachment dimensions and contextualized personality traits.
- Part 2 (Partner-Perception): 25 items assessing perceived partner personality and behavior.
- Response Scale: 7-point Likert agreement scale with anchored points:
- 1 = Strongly disagree
- 2 = Disagree
- 3 = Slightly disagree
- 4 = Neither agree nor disagree
- 5 = Slightly agree
- 6 = Agree
- 7 = Strongly agree
- Scoring Procedures:
- Certain items are reverse-coded to prevent acquiescence response set bias. Reverse-scored items (where a rating of 1 becomes 7, 2 becomes 6, etc.) are computed using the standard transformation: $ ext{Item}_{ ext{reversed}} = 8 – ext{Raw Score}$.
- Key reverse-scored attachment items include Items 28, 30, 32, 34, 35, 36, 40, 43, 49, 50, 53, 56, and 60.
- Subscale scores are calculated as the mean of their constituent items. Continuous scoring is retained for research analyses; for categorical descriptive feedback, individuals may be categorized into attachment quadrants (Secure, Preoccupied, Dismissing-Avoidant, Fearful-Avoidant) via median splits or latent class categorization.
Permissions & Fee and Test Year
The scientific components forming the Close Relationship Personality Test were formalized between 1998 and 2000 through the validation of the Experiences in Close Relationships instruments (Brennan et al., 1998; Fraley et al., 2000) and later adapted into online research batteries by Dr. R. Chris Fraley via the University of Illinois Personality Lab (circa 2003–present).
Licensing and Usage: The assessment is open-access for non-commercial educational, scientific, and empirical research purposes under standard academic attribution conventions. No licensing fees are required for individual research studies or university instructional contexts. Clinicians and researchers may administer the instrument provided appropriate citation is given to the original psychometric literature. Commercial deployment or integration into proprietary software platforms requires prior written permission from the primary research authors.
References
- Bowlby, J. (1982). Attachment and loss: Vol. 1. Attachment (2nd ed.). Basic Books. (Original work published 1969).
- Brennan, K. A., Clark, C. L., & Shaver, P. R. (1998). Self-report measurement of adult attachment: An integrative overview. In J. A. Simpson & W. S. Rholes (Eds.), Attachment theory and close relationships (pp. 46–76). Guilford Press.
- Fraley, R. C., Heffernan, M. E., Vicary, A. M., & Brumbaugh, C. C. (2011). The Experiences in Close Relationships-Relationship Structures (ECR-RS) questionnaire: A tool for assessing attachment representations across relationships. Psychological Assessment, 23(3), 615–625. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0022898
- Fraley, R. C., Waller, N. G., & Brennan, K. A. (2000). An item response theory analysis of self-report measures of adult attachment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(2), 350–365. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.78.2.350
- Hazan, C., & Shaver, P. R. (1987). Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(3), 511–524. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.52.3.511
- John, O. P., & Srivastava, S. (1999). The Big Five trait taxonomy: History, measurement, and theoretical perspectives. In L. A. Pervin & O. P. John (Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (2nd ed., pp. 102–138). Guilford Press.
- Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2016). Attachment in adulthood: Structure, dynamics, and change (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
- Roberts, B. W., & Wood, D. (2006). Personality development in the context of the neo-socioanalytic model of personality. In D. K. Mroczek & T. D. Little (Eds.), Handbook of personality development (pp. 11–39). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.