attachment Flashcards
What is attachment?
A deep emotional bond between two individuals who seek closeness and feel more secure when in close proximity to their attachment partner.
How did Harlow study attachment in baby monkeys?
Harlow put baby monkeys in two situations with two wire monkeys.
One with cloth wrapped around it and one without a cloth but milk attached to it.
Harlow measured attachment based on time spent with each wire monkey.
It was found that the babies spent a majority of time with the cloth monkey rather than the milk monkey suggesting they preferred comfort over food.
What are some strengths of Harlows study?
+ Benefits outweigh the ethical issues of the research as it demonstrates the importance of emotional care when looking after children
+ Provides support for Bowlbys attachment theory ^
+ Behaviourists believe that behaviours studied in animals can be applied to humans as we learn in similar ways
What are some weaknesses of Harlows study?
+ Criticised as cruel and unethical as baby monkeys were removed from their mothers which caused emotional damage to both the baby monkey and high anxiety in mothers
+ A study conducted on animals can be considered not generalisable to human behaviour due to the physiological and physical differences and cognitive functioning, humans are more emotionally complex than monkeys
How did Lorenz develop the imprinting theory? What does this suggest about attachment?
Lorenz hatched gosling eggs and divided them in half where one half would see Lorenz when first hatched or their actual goose mother.
It was found that when they hatched, the goslings imprinted to Lorenz at birth due to the existence of the critical period which is 12-17 hours after birth.
This suggests that attachment is an innate trait and programmed genetically
How did Guiton 1966 support Lorenz’s imprinting theory?
Found that when chicks were shown yellow gloves at birth, they imprinted on the glove which confirms Lorenz goslings study. Also provides that attachment is genetic as the glove did not show any comfort to develop an attachment.
What are some strengths of Lorenz’s imprinting theory?
+ Supported by Guiton 1966
+ Useful in the development of Bowlbys critical period
What are some weaknesses of Lorenzs study?
+ Ethical issues as imprinting is irreversible, including sexual imprinting in the geese which led to them growing up and not being attracted to their own species
+ Animal studies can be considered non-generalisable to humans to the emotional and physiological differences
How does the learning theory explain attachment?
The learning theory proposes that attachments are learned behaviours through classical and operant conditioning rather than an innate biological tendency.
What is the secondary drive hypothesis suggested by Dollard and Millard?
Describes how primary drives are essential for survival such as hunger for food which become associated which emotional drives such as closeness and attachment.
Explain how a baby becomes attachment to its mother through classical conditioning
Food/Milk is the unconditioned stimuli associated with pleasure which is an unconditioned response. The mother becomes associated with the pleasure response. Over time the mother will become the conditioned stimuli which results in the pleasure and comfort response which develops into an attachment.
What are the weakness of the learning theory to attachment?
+ Challenged by Lorenz who did a study on goslings who were attached at birth demonstrating that behaviour is innate and not learned.
+ Reductionist as an explanation because it does not consider other explanations such as the biological explanation
+ Does not consider complex human emotions and free will, e.g in the social learning theory
+ Harlows monkeys demonstrate how they preferred comfort over food
What are the strengths of the learning approach to attachment?
+ Supported by research conducted by Pavlov and the case of Little Albert who do show examples of learning behaviours through classical conditioning
+ Has large explanatory power and can explain day to day occurrences of attachment and why children are bonded to mothers
What is Bowlbys monotropic theory?
The theory that attachment behaviours in both caregivers and babies are biologically programmed with innate behaviours to ensure an attachment is formed.
This is an evolutionary approach to attachment to make sure we survive
What does each letter n ASCMI stand for?
A: Adaptive S: Social releasers C: Critical period M: Mono tropic I: Internal working model
What is monotropy?
Monotropy is the theory that infants form one singular main attachment that is stronger than the rest which is usually with their mother.
If the mother is not available then a suitable substitute could also work.
What are the strengths of the monotropic theory?
+ Supported by the 44 Thieves study to demonstrate the importance of the monotropic theory
+ Supports the biological explanation to attachment
+ Lorenz model supports the idea of a critical period as an innate method for attachment formation, usually the mother
What are the cons of the monotropic theory of attachment?
+ Case studies such as Genie and rutters roman orphans demonstrate how attachment behaviours can still form even when not having a monotropic attachment
+ Socially sensitive research as it puts a heavy importance on mothers
Describe Ainsworth Strange situation
Conducted a controlled observation of the interactions between 100 middle class American infants and their mothers and were observed in eight episodes of different scenarios with the caregiver and strangers.
Attachment was based on Maccobys key behaviours such as seeking proximity, seperation anxiety, pleasure when reunited and general orientation of behaviour.
What were the findings of Ainsworth study?
Identified and categorised three different type of attachment styles.
70% were secure, distressed when separated from caregiver and sought contact and soothing on reunion.
10% were resistant where they were distressed on seperation and resistant on reunion.
20% were avoidant where they showed general detached behaviour and not seeking much contact when the caregiver left and on reunion.
What are the strengths of Ainsworth study?
+ A very standardised and organised procedure as it was a controlled observation, easy to replicate and therefore can be tested for reliability and be conducted under several scenarios.
+ Has been used in different cultures to measure the attachment styles in different areas such as Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenbergs meta analysis on cross cultural variation.
What are the cons of Ainsworths strange situation?
+Validity of the categories can be questioned as Main and soloman found that a small number of infants showed a disorganised array of attachments that had no consistent pattern of behaviour
+Ethnocentric (culturally biased) as it assumes that behaviour is the same in all cultures when it is based on American procedures, anything other than secure-attachments are thought to be wrong when in other countries it is considered normal e.g Takahasi and Japan.
+Social desirability may have affected the results as caregiver may act differently to how they treat the child as they are being observed.
What did Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg discover 1988?
They wanted to test wether attachment style percentages were universal across all cultures.
By using meta analysis on 32 studies using Ainsworths strange situation in 8 different countries they discovered that secure attachment was the main attachment style across all countries.
However, individualistic cultures such as Western countries had a higher portion of insecure avoidant while Eastern collectivist countries had a higher portion of resistant children, demonstrating that cultural norms and differences affect attachment styles.
Evaluate Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg 1998 meta analysis
+ The use of meta analysis combines several different studies across different cultures which can be considered more reliable as it does not only consider one set of results but several. Also helped identify the different percentages of attachments in each culture
= Strange situation was created in America with American cultural norms therefore it can be questionable to assume that the same behaviours identified using the strange situation applies to attachment behaviours across other countries.
=It was found that there was also more variation between subcultures called intercultural variation suggesting that is is oversimplification to assume a child will behave a certain way just because they are in a culture.
