Attachment Flashcards
What is the behaviourist perspective on love?
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
Who is Harry Harlow?
First studied love and affection scientifically, starting with the affectionate bond of a child for its mother
What were Harlow’s experiments?
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.
What is John Bowlby’s Attachment theory?
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
What is the attachment behavioural system?
A system that regulates safety similar to a thermostat, an evolved biobehavioural system that motiavtes maintenance of proximity to caregivers (attachment figures).
What are the four hallmarks of an attachment figure?
-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
What are the 3 responses to separation?
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Despair: preoccupation with caregiver still evident, depressed mood, appear hopeless and withdrawn.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
What is Mary Ainsworth’s strange situation procedure?
observed infants in unfamiliar (strange) laboratory environment and divided the experiment into separations from mother and reunions with mother
What are the three behavioural patterns?
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
What caregiving behaviours lead to the development of each attachment pattern?
secure: encourage exploration while being a secure base.
anxious: inconsistent support, sometimes yes, sometimes no.
avoidant: rejecting and discouraging of closeness
What are internal working models?
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)
What is some evidence that attachment dynamics persist into adulthood?
- couples separating in an airport are more likely to maintain physical contact before they leave.
- People experience anger, anxiety, and sadness in response to actual or perceived threats to close relationships.
- The mere presence of a close relationship partner can alleviate distress in the lab
- When participants perceive their partners as more supportive, they report a greater sense of independence and more likely to explore and achieve goals.
How does attachment in adulthood differ from infancy?
- 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
What are the four dimensions/types of attachment
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
What is the adult attachment interview?
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
What is the dimensional view of attachment?
The idea that attachment can be measured on two continous dimensions: avoidance and anxiety
What is the control system model of attachment?
a system that involves hyperactiviating and deactivating strategies and helps explain why people may use them
What are hyperactivating strategies?
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
What attributions are commonly made by anxiously attached indivudals?
More likely to make relationship threatening attributions
What evidence shows anxiously attached people’s hyperactivating strategies?
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
What are deactivating strategies?
serve to deactivate the attachment system
involves avoiding dwelling on memories, insecurities and fears, delefcting attention away from distressing material.
-used by avoidant individuals
What are postemptive and preemptive strategies?
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
Are defensive strategies sustainable?
In high stress situations, defense strategies are hard to maintain because they require a lot of effort
What is the rebound effect?
heightened intrusion of unwanted thoughts following their supression
Explain the study on the rebound effect?
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
Describe how avoidant attachment influences perception of social rewards
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)
How do secure attachment people seek and respond to support?
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
How do anxiously attached people seek and respond to support?
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
How do avoidant attached people seek and respond to support?
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)
What are the relational consequences of insecure attachments?
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
Working models need to be both environmentally stable and environmentally labile, what does this mean?
stable: provide sense of continuity despite some changes in environment
Labile: help adapt to changes in environment and relationships with diff people
What are working models?
schemas which direct attention and influence how we interpret, store, and recall info
They are self-perpetuating
How are working models self-perpetuating?
perceptual confirmation and behavioural confirmation
What is availability and accessibility in attachment style?
availability= do you have a schema for a certain type of attachment
Accessibility=how easily do the representations come to mind
What is responsiveness?
How people respond to disclosure…
What is self-disclosure?
sharing about oneself
Types of support
emotional: expression of comfort and caring
practical: provision of tangible resources and aid, problem solving, etc
Trust and goal validation
short term, trust is important
goal validation is important for anxious individuals
social support is important for avoidant individuals
