Attatchment L6-11 Flashcards
What is Bowlby’s monotropic theory?
This theory suggests that attachment is important for a childs survival, and that attchment behaviours in both babies and their caregivers have evolved through natural selection.
This means that infants are biologically programmed with innate behaviours that ensure that attachment occurs.
What is monotropy?
Monotropy refers to when a child has an innate need to attach to one main attachment figure. This concept suggests that there is one relationship, usually the mother, which is more important than the rest.
(Bowlby believed this)
How do attachments form according to Bowlby’s monotropic theory?
- Infants have an innate drive to become attached to an adult. The critical period for attachment is before 2 years of age. Those who aren’t able to form an attachment during this, struggle with forming them later on.
- proposed that attachment is determined by the caregivers sensitivity. Strongly attached infants tend to have a caregiver who is responsive,accessible and cooperative.
- social releasers(smiling/crying) are important during this time to ensure that attachments develop between caregivers and their infants.
- argues that children will have one special emotional bond. This is called monotropy.
Strengths of Bowlby’s monotropic theory?
- Support for internal working model:
Bailey et al. assessed 99 mothers with one year old babies on the quality of their attachment to their own mothers using a standard interview procedure. The researchers also assessed the attachment of the babies to the mothers by observation.
-It was found that the mothers who reported poor attachment to their own parents in the interviews
were much more likely to have children classified as poor according to the observations.
This supports the idea that as Bowlby said, an internal working model of attachment was being passed through the families.
Weaknesses of Bowlby’s monotropic theory?
- Schaffer and Emerson (1964) suggest that multiple attachments are more common in babies than monotropy. They found that by 18 months only 13% of the infants had only one person they were attached to.
- Tizard and Hodges (1989) found that children who had never formed any attachments by the age of four, and were then adopted, could still form attachments to their new adopted parents. This goes against the idea of a critical period before two years of age during which an attachment must form or it never will.
- It is impossible to test Bowlby’s argument that attachment has persisted in the same form throughout our evolutionary history, making it unscientific.
What is the strange situation?
the methodology used by Ainsworth to investigate differences in attachments between infants and their caregivers.
It was a controlled observation which took place in a room that had been furnished with some toys.
The investigators observed the infants in a series of three-minute episodes;
-mother and baby,
-stranger enters,
-mother leaves,
-mother returns, etc.
They recorded an infant’s proximity seeking, stranger anxiety, separation
protest and reunion joy.
Findings of the strange situation?
- Type A, Insecure avoidant:
- 20% of babies.
- no separation protest, no stranger anxiety, no reunion joy. - Type B, secure attachment:
- 70% of babies.
- explore toys. use caregiver as a safe base. Show distress and separation anxiety. Show reunion joy. Accepts comfort from stranger (little stranger anxiety). - Type C, Insecure resistance:
- 10% of babies.
- don’t explore toys (very clingy). Extreme separation protest and stranger anxiety. No reunion joy.
Evaluation of the strange situation?
+ The Strange Situation has been replicated many times. It is easy to replicate due to high level of control. Has been carried out successfully in different cultures.
- This methodology was developed in the US so may be culturally biased. Attachment behaviour that is seen as healthy in the US may not be seen as such in all cultures.
- lacks ecological validity: may not reflect the infant’s real world behaviour. Studies have found that babies’ attachment behaviours are stronger in laboratory settings than in their home environment.
- gender biased- only carried out using mothers as the caregiver. Children might be insecurely attached to their mothers but securely attached to their fathers. So isn’t measuring the child’s overall attachments.
Hazan and shaver aim?
Designed a study to test the connection between a persons early attachment style, their internal working model and their adult attachment style.
- predicted that there would be a correlation between adults’ attachment styles and the parenting the received.
Hazan and shaver procedure.
-placed a love quiz in an American town newspaper.
Quiz asked qs about their:
-relationship with their parents( to identify early attachment style.
- attitudes towards love (assesses internal working model).
-current relationship experiences (current attachment style)
Analysed 620 responses, 205 men, 415 women between 14-82.
Behaviours influenced by the internal working model?
- childhood friendships.
- poor parenting.
- romantic relationships.
- mental health.
Hazan and shaver findings.
56% = secure.
25% = insecure-avoidant.
19% = insecure resistant.
-securely attached individuals tended to have a positive internal working model.
-those described as securely attached described the important love relationships they’ve had as ‘happy, friendly and trusting. ( longer relationships).
-Insecure avoidant pps were more doubtful about the existence or durability of romantic love.
Hazan and shaver weaknesses.
- study is correlational rather than experimental and therefore we can’t determine cause and effect. It is impossible to say that infant attachments determine adult relationships. Could be a third variable that affects both, such as a person’s innate temperament.
- other studies have failed to find the strong correlation between infant and adult attachment style. Fraley (2002) conducted a review of 27 samples where infants were assessed in infancy and later reassessed (ranging from one month to 20 years later). He found correlations ranging from .5 to as low as .1.
- Clark and Clark (1998) describe the influence of infant attachment on later relationships as probable but not definite. People are not always doomed to have bad relationships just because they had problems with their attachments in infancy.
What did Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg do?
conducted a meta-analysis of 32 studies into attachment to see if attachment occurs in the same way across all cultures.
- All of the studies they included had used the strange situation to measure attachment.
- These studies looked at the relationships between mothers and their babies, all were under 24 months of age.
- The studies were conducted in eight countries, some individualistic cultures (USA, UK, and Germany) and some collectivist cultures (Japan, China, and Israel).
Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg findings?
-secure attachment was the most common attachment style in all of the
eight countries studied.
-the second most common attachment style was insecure-avoidant, except
in Israel and Japan where avoidant was rare but resistant was common.
-the lowest percentage of secure attachments was in China.
-the highest percentage of secure attachments was in Great Britain.
-the highest percentage of insecure-avoidant attachments was in West
Germany.
-overall variations within cultures were 1.5 times greater than the
variation between cultures.
