The role of attachment styles in shaping proactive behaviour: an intra-individual analysis

Focusing on the intra-individual variation of proactive behaviour, the authors propose that curiosity, core self-evaluations (CSE), and future orientation are states that influence proactive behaviour at a given time at the within-individual level, and these within-individual associations are moderated by attachment styles at the between-individual level. For a sample of Taiwanese students (N= 58), the results showed that monthly curiosity, CSE, and future orientation positively predicted monthly proactive behaviour, but these within-individual associations were different depending on an individual's relationship anxiety in attachment. People high in relationship anxiety tend to behave proactively to approach future goals at a given time, but cannot rely on their self-evaluations to foster the proactive action at the same time, revealing an ambivalent attitude towards proactive behaviour.