Understanding the Longitudinal Associations Between Attachment Style and AI Companion Use in Romantic Human-AI Relationships: A Three-Wave Panel Study

Despite research increasingly focusing on romantic relationships with AI companions, little is known about the psychological mechanisms that drive people to engage in such synthetic bonds. Based on attachment theory, this three-wave panel study first examines the reciprocal associations between attachment style and AI companion use. Random intercept cross-lagged panel models demonstrated that, at the within-person level, changes in people’s attachment anxiety over time were positively related to their AI companion use, and that, at the between-person level, people higher in attachment anxiety used AI companions more, whereas those higher in attachment avoidance used less. These findings highlight the need to disentangle within- and between-person dynamics to derive more accurate conclusions when examining underlying drivers in human-AI interactions, as well as offer new insights into the emerging human-AI relationship field by serving as a springboard for understanding how engagement with AI companions may be related to attachment styles longitudinally.