Bowlby's 44 Thieves Study Flashcards
Explain the Aims of the study.
In 1938, 9 out of 10 crimes were thefts, and half of these were by juveniles (<21) He decided to see whether an attachment bond caused child delinquents.
Procedure.
He carried out the study in a London clinic, where he selected 44 thieves, and 44 controls. Each child had multiple tests when they entered. First, they had IQ tests (carried out by a psychologist), then a social worker interviewed a parent and made a case study of their early lives. Each leader reported back to Bowlby who interviewed the participants with their caregivers.
Results.
More than half of the juvenile thieves had been separated from their mothers for longer than six months during their first five years. He found six characteristics for the thieves.
What were the six characteristics, and who were affected?
A- Normal (2 children were found to be normal)
B- Depressed (9 children suffered from depression)
C- Circular (2 Thieves)
D- Hyperthermic (13 children)
E- Affectionless (14 children in this category)
F- Schizoid (4 Thieves)
Conclusions:
He linked the affectionless psychopathy to the separation the juvenile thieves showed. They had strong emotional loss in infancy, and their attachment was broken, suggesting this caused the affectionless psychopathy, and low IQ.
Strengths of his study:
Both Qualitative and Quantitative data was used.
The control group allowed a clear comparison and correlation.
Consent was given by the caregivers of the children.
It has led to real life applications in the treatment of delinquents and how important attachment is.
Weaknesses of this study:
He stated himself that he would have liked a ‘normal’ control group, as they were also from the clinic. This lowers generalisability and reliability.
The study was only taken from one clinic and surrounding area, so was low in generalisability.
It lacked ecological validity, as the children may have acted differently to change their results.
