Attachment

Question 1

What is the behaviourist perspective on love?

Answer 1

Behaviourism believes all human and animal behaviour can be explained in terms of conditioning.

Infants cling to their mothers because they have come to associate the mother with food and other material rewards

Question 2

Who is Harry Harlow?

Answer 2

First studied love and affection scientifically, starting with the affectionate bond of a child for its mother

Question 3

What were Harlow’s experiments?

Answer 3

Infant monkeys raised alone in lab showed severe developmental issues, there was a strong attachment to soft cloth pads used to cover the floor

In a study with surrogate mothers, there is a cloth mother and wire mother. Even when the wire mother has food, the monkeys still chose the cloth mother.

Question 4

What is John Bowlby’s Attachment theory?

Answer 4

took an behaviorist/evolutionary perspective on development of childrens emotional attachments
- infants are highly vulnerable and helpless
there is a mechanism to keep infants close and protected

Question 5

What is the attachment behavioural system?

Answer 5

A system that regulates safety similar to a thermostat, an evolved biobehavioural system that motiavtes maintenance of proximity to caregivers (attachment figures).

Question 6

What are the four hallmarks of an attachment figure?

Answer 6

-proximity seeking: the person you go to when in need or distress.
-safe haven: provides protection
-secure base: allows one to explore new environments
-separation distress: actual or expected separation from attachment figures evokes strong feelings of distress

Question 7

What are the 3 responses to separation?

Answer 7

Protest: acute distress, crying, clinging, calling
Despair: preoccupation with caregiver still evident, depressed mood, appear hopeless and withdrawn.
Deattachment: may begin to show interest in other things and people, appears listless and apathetic if reunited with caregiver

Question 8

What is Mary Ainsworth’s strange situation procedure?

Answer 8

observed infants in unfamiliar (strange) laboratory environment and divided the experiment into separations from mother and reunions with mother

Question 9

What are the three behavioural patterns?

Answer 9

Secure: distressed by mothers departure, seeks contact when she returns and is reassured

Anxious: clingy, highly distressed by departure of mother, continues to cry when mother returns.

Avoidant: distressed when mother leaves, but appears indifferent when mother returns. Sullen

Question 10

What caregiving behaviours lead to the development of each attachment pattern?

Answer 10

secure: encourage exploration while being a secure base.

anxious: inconsistent support, sometimes yes, sometimes no.

avoidant: rejecting and discouraging of closeness

Question 11

What are internal working models?

Answer 11

schemas for attachment figures and relationships; involve specific memories and beliefs about oneself and their attachment figures, as well as procedural knowledge.

Includes models of other (attachment figures)
and models of self (one’s own efficacy and values)

Question 12

What is some evidence that attachment dynamics persist into adulthood?

Answer 12

1. couples separating in an airport are more likely to maintain physical contact before they leave.
2. People experience anger, anxiety, and sadness in response to actual or perceived threats to close relationships.
3. The mere presence of a close relationship partner can alleviate distress in the lab
4. When participants perceive their partners as more supportive, they report a greater sense of independence and more likely to explore and achieve goals.

Question 13

How does attachment in adulthood differ from infancy?

Answer 13

• Individuals other than parents often take role of attachment figures (romantic partners, close friends)
• more about psychological proximity (not just physical)
  – threshold for attachment system activation is higher
  -become more capable of self-soothing
  -mutuality
  -sexuality

Question 14

What are the four dimensions/types of attachment

Answer 14

secure: balanced realistic view of early relationships, open, direct, and cooperative in their discourse.
anxious/preoocupied: seems anxious or angry, appear to still be enmeshed with these early relationship experiences, long-winded, signs of confusion
avoidant: doesn’t want to get close to others, worry that they will get hurt
dismissing: discomfort discussing childhood experiences, attempts to be put positive spin on negative experiences, deny influence of early attachment on relationship

Question 15

What is the adult attachment interview?

Answer 15

Discuss relationship with parents, choose adjectives that describe them, justify choice,
speculate about parents’ behaviour
–> then analyze how people answer as well as the content of their answers

Question 16

What is the dimensional view of attachment?

Answer 16

The idea that attachment can be measured on two continous dimensions: avoidance and anxiety

Question 17

What is the control system model of attachment?

Answer 17

a system that involves hyperactiviating and deactivating strategies and helps explain why people may use them

Question 18

What are hyperactivating strategies?

Answer 18

involve heightened vigilance for possible threat, exaggerated appraisals of threats, rumination, high accessibility to negative emotions
Activate the attachment system

• used by anxiously attached individuals

Question 19

What attributions are commonly made by anxiously attached indivudals?

Answer 19

More likely to make relationship threatening attributions

Question 20

What evidence shows anxiously attached people’s hyperactivating strategies?

Answer 20

daily life study: affective reactions to perceptions of partners behaviour in everyday life found that partners high in attachment anxiety had stronger reactions when they percieved the partner was behaving less warm

Question 21

What are deactivating strategies?

Answer 21

serve to deactivate the attachment system
involves avoiding dwelling on memories, insecurities and fears, delefcting attention away from distressing material.

-used by avoidant individuals

Question 22

What are postemptive and preemptive strategies?

Answer 22

Two types of deactivation strategies:
posr: avoiding retrieving and looking back on memories, insecurities and fears
pre: deflecting attention from harmful stimuli, fail to encode things into memory

Question 23

Are defensive strategies sustainable?

Answer 23

In high stress situations, defense strategies are hard to maintain because they require a lot of effort

Question 24

What is the rebound effect?

Answer 24

heightened intrusion of unwanted thoughts following their supression

Question 25

Explain the study on the rebound effect?

Answer 25

A paryicipant was asked to recall a painful breakup and then stop thinking about it. Under normal conditions, the Ps are good at avoiding the rebound effect via the stroop task. BUT when cognitive load is added, they are unable to avoid the supressed thoughts of the breakup

Question 26

Describe how avoidant attachment influences perception of social rewards

Answer 26

Avoidants may maintain lower perceptions of social reward to avert pain of disappointment

STUDY: evaluate dating profiles where there is a high(long term) and a low responsiveness target (casual) Attachment avoidance negatively predicts reward potential for high but now low responsiveness target. (no hopes up, no disappointment)

Question 27

How do secure attachment people seek and respond to support?

Answer 27

Belives that distress is safely acknowledged and expressed

Learned that proximity seeking results in support, protection, and relief of distress (comfortable turning to others, no threat to autonomy)

Able to engage in problem solving

Question 28

How do anxiously attached people seek and respond to support?

Answer 28

Hypervigilance for attachment figure availability

Biased perception in direction of noticing or imagining unresponsiveness

perceived unavailability of partner amplifies distress

leads to excessive reassurance seeking: inappropriately strong tendency to seek assurances that one is valued and loved after such assurances have already been provided

Question 29

How do avoidant attached people seek and respond to support?

Answer 29

Have learned that proximity-seeking may lead to punishment (inattention, rejection, hostility) it is futile at best and dangerous at worst.

Instead, emphasize self-reliance
( study: inhibited closeness-related goals and withdrew emotionally from partners on days they had insufficient independence or control in their relationships)

Question 30

What are the relational consequences of insecure attachments?

Answer 30

Avoidant women inhibited attention seeking as their distress grows ALSO withdrew emotionally on days when they had insufficent independence.

Anxious women are hyper vigilant, more sensitive to perceptions of unavailability

Question 31

Working models need to be both environmentally stable and environmentally labile, what does this mean?

Answer 31

stable: provide sense of continuity despite some changes in environment

Labile: help adapt to changes in environment and relationships with diff people

Question 32

What are working models?

Answer 32

schemas which direct attention and influence how we interpret, store, and recall info
They are self-perpetuating

Question 33

How are working models self-perpetuating?

Answer 33

perceptual confirmation and behavioural confirmation

Question 34

What is availability and accessibility in attachment style?

Answer 34

availability= do you have a schema for a certain type of attachment

Accessibility=how easily do the representations come to mind

Question 35

What is responsiveness?

Answer 35

How people respond to disclosure…

Question 36

What is self-disclosure?

Answer 36

sharing about oneself

Question 37

Types of support

Answer 37

emotional: expression of comfort and caring
practical: provision of tangible resources and aid, problem solving, etc

Question 38

Trust and goal validation

Answer 38

short term, trust is important

goal validation is important for anxious individuals

social support is important for avoidant individuals