Attachment - The Continuity Hypothesis

Question 1

What are childhood relationships?

Answer 1

Affiliations with other people in childhood, including friends and classmates, and with adults such as teachers.

Question 2

What are adult relationships?

Answer 2

Those relationships the child goes on to have later in life as an adult. These include friendships and working relationships but most critically relationships with romantic partners and the person’s own children.

Question 3

What are internal working models?

Answer 3

The mental representations we all carry with us of our attachment to our primary caregiver. They are important in affecting our future relationships because they carry our perception of what relationships are like.

Question 4

What are the key assumptions of the internal working model?

Answer 4

• first attachment is a template for future relationships
• good experience of attachment = good relationship expectations
• bad experience of attachment = bad relationship expectations
• secure infants form better friendships and are less likely to bully
• internal working models affect parenting

Question 5

Why is the first attachment a template for future relationships?

Answer 5

The quality of a child’s first attachment is crucial because it provides a template that will affect the nature of their future relationships. This is due to the influence of the internal working model created by that first attachment.

Question 6

What does a good experience of attachment lead to?

Answer 6

A child whose first experience is of a loving relationship with a reliable caregiver assumes this is how all relationships are meant to be. They will then seek out functional relationships and behave functionally within them.

Question 7

What does a bad experience of attachment lead to?

Answer 7

A child with bad experiences of their first attachment will bring these experiences to bear on later relationships. This may mean they struggle to form relationships in the first place or they do not behave appropriately in them.

Question 8

What did Kerns (1994) find?

Peer relationships in childhood

Answer 8

Attachment type is associated with the quality of peer relationships in childhood. Securely attached infants tend to go on to form the best quality childhood friendships whereas insecurely attached infants later have friendship difficulties (Kerns 1994).

Question 9

What did Rowan Myron-Wilson and Peter Smith (1998) find?

Bullying

Answer 9

Bullying behaviour can be predicted by attachment type. Rowan Myron-Wilson and Peter Smith (1998) assessed attachment type and bullying involvement using standard questionnaires in 196 children aged 7-11 from London.

Secure children were very unlikely to be involved in bullying. Insecure-avoidant children were the most likely to be victims and insecure-resistant children were most likely to be bullies.

Question 10

What did Bailey et al. (2007) find?

Relationships in adulthood as a parent

Answer 10

Internal working models also affect the child’s ability to parent their own children. People tend to base their parenting style on their internal working model so attachment type tends to be passed on through generations of a family.

Bailey et al. (2007) considered the attachments of 99 mothers to their babies and to their own mothers. Mother-baby attachment was assessed using the Strange Situation and mother-own mother attachment was assessed using an adult attachment interview. The majority of women had the same attachment classification both to their babies and their own mothers.

Question 11

What did Gerard McCarthy (1999) find?

Friendship and romantic relationships

Answer 11

McCarthy (1999) studied 40 adult women who had been assessed when they were infants to establish their early attachment type.

Those assessed as securely attached infants had the best adult friendships and romantic relationships. Adults classed as insecure-resistant as infants had particular problems maintaining friendships whilst those classed as insecure-avoidant struggled with intimacy in romantic relationships.

Question 12

Procedure

Hazan and Shaver (1987) Romantic Relationships

Answer 12

The researchers analysed 620 replies to a ‘love quiz’ printed in an American local newspaper.

The quiz assessed three different aspects of relationships:

• respondents’ current and most important relationship
• general love experiences
• attachment type

Question 13

Findings

Hazan and Shaver (1987) Romantic Relationships

Answer 13

56% of respondents were identified as securely attached, with 25% insecure-avoidant and 19% insecure-resistant.

Their attachment type was reflected in their romantic relationships:

• secure respondents were the most likely to have good and longer-lasting romantic relationships
• avoidant respondents tended to be jealous and fear intimacy

Question 14

What are the strengths of the continuity hypothesis?

Answer 14

• some evidence to support continuity of attachment type

Question 15

What are the weaknesses of the continuity hypothesis?

Answer 15

• evidence on continuity of attachment is mixed
• most studies have issues with validity
• several studies indicate associations but this is not the same as causation
• the influence of infant attachment on future relationships is exaggerated
• there is a theoretical problem with research related to internal working models
• there is an alternative theory

Question 16

What evidence supports continuity?

Answer 16

Internal working models predict continuity between the security of an infant’s attachment and that of its later relationships. Evidence of this continuity is mixed. Some studies, like that by McCarthy, do appear to support continuity and so provide evidence to support internal working models.

Question 17

What evidence doesn’t support continuity?

Answer 17

Zimmerman (2000) assessed infant attachment type and adolescent attachments to parents. There was very little relationship between quality of infant and adolescent attachment. This is a limitation because it is not what we would expect if internal working models were important in development.

Question 18

Why do most studies have issues with validity?

Answer 18

Most studies of attachment do not use the Strange Situation but assess infant-parent attachment using interviews or questionnaires, not in infancy but years later.

The validity of questionnaires and interviews is limited because they depend on respondents being honest and having a realistic view of their own relationships.

A related problem concerns the retrospective nature of assessment. Looking back in adulthood at one’s early attachment lacks validity because it relies on accurate recollection.

Question 19

How do several studies indicate associations but not causations?

Answer 19

There are alternative explanations for the continuity that often exists between infant and later relationships.

The child’s temperament may influence both infant attachment and the quality of later relationships.

This is a limitation because it is counter to Bowlby’s view that the internal working model caused these outcomes.

Question 20

How is the influence of infant attachment on future relationships exaggerated?

Answer 20

Clarke and Clarke (1998) describe the influence of infant attachment on later relationships as probabilistic and not deterministic.

People are not doomed to always have bad relationships because they had attachment problems. They just have a greater risk of problems.

By over-emphasising this risk we become too pessimistic about people’s futures.

Question 21

Why is there a theoretical problem with research related to internal working models?

Answer 21

Internal working models are unconscious - we are not directly aware of their influence on us. So we would not really expect to get direct evidence about them through self-report methods which require conscious awareness.

When participants self-report on their relationships they are relying on their conscious understanding of those relationships. At best, self-report gives us indirect evidence about internal working models.

This is a potential limitation of most research involving the concept of internal working models.

Question 22

What alternative theory is there to explain the continuity of relationship issues?

Answer 22

Kagan’s temperament hypothesis.