Attachment: Influence of Early Attachment Flashcards
what did Bowlby suggest about influence of early attachment?
there will be continuity between your attachment type/quality and your relationships in later life. he said when we form our first main attachment, we form an internal working model, which is a mental template for relationships.
what did Bowlby say about parenting styles?
we are more likely to raise our children similarly to how we were raised, as our internal working model were built using our parent’s parenting style as a template. this results in your child will have a similar attachment type to you and your parents.
what can the internal working model affect?
it affects our expectations of others and our attitudes towards them, which would impact on the quality of romantic relationships in adulthood.
what’s research support for influence of early attachment? (A03)
Bailey found that the majority of women (out of 99 studied) had the same attachment classification both to their babies and own mothers. this supports the idea of continuity. the internal working models we develop in response to our first attachment to our primary attachment figure contains our perceptions of relationships so we seek out these relationships.
how is influence into early attachment reductionist and deterministic? (A03)
it suggests that the influence of early attachment is deterministic so a poor-quality attachment means the individual will become bad parents themselves and unable to form normal romantic relationships in adulthood. it suggests that insecurely attached infants are doomed to grow up and have bad adult relationships. this is untrue as there are many cases were insecurely attached children have strong happy relationships..
how does Simpson’s study support influence of early attachment? (A03)
Simpson did a longitudinal study - participants were studied at 4 key points of their lives: infancy, early childhood, adolescence and adulthood. attachment types and romantic relationships were assessed at different stages. they found that securely attached children were more expressive and emotionally attached in later romantic relationships. this supports the claim that expression of emotions in adult relationships can be traced back to early attachment experiences.
