The Role of Attachment Styles, Love Styles and Emotional Expression in Predicting the Happiness of Married Teachers

It is crucial for teachers to be happy at work, because they can do their best. This study was conducted to determine the role of attachment styles, love styles and emotional expressiveness in predicting the happiness of married teachers. The research method was descriptive-cross sectional and correlational. A total of 260 teachers from Rudsar city were randomly selected through a two-stage cluster sampling among 30 schools. They responded to Oxford Happiness Inventory, Beshart's Attachment Styles, King and Emmons Emotional Expressiveness Questionnare and Sternberg Love Styles Scales. Correlation analysis showed that happiness has direct relationships with the secure attachment style, the style of love, such as intimacy, passion and the commitment and expressiveness of excitement, and has an inverse relationship with insecure and ambivalent attachment style. The results of t-test showed that the mean of happiness in men's group is significantly higher than in comparision with women. Regression analysis in the men group showed that secure attachment style and love-commitment style were positively and significantly, and avoidant and ambivalent attachment styles negatively predicted 40% of the variance in happiness scores. In the women's group, it was also found that ambivalent attachment style negativly and emotional expressiveness positively predicted 52% of happiness scores. Overall, it can be said that attachment styles, committed love (especially in men) and emotional expressiveness (especially in women) can explain the happiness of the teachers' community by influencing how they interact and communicate.