bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation

Question 1

what is bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation

Answer 1

• theory that an attachment is essential for healthy psychological and emotional development
• states there will be negative consequences of maternal deprivation such as: inability to form attachments in the future, affectionless psychopathy, delinquency and problems with cognitive development

Question 2

what effects on development can maternal deprivation have

Answer 2

• intellectual = suffer retardation characterised by abnormally low IQ
• emotional = affectionless psychopathy - inability to experience guilt or strong emotions towards other

Question 3

outline bowlby’s 44 thieves study

Answer 3

• 44 criminal teenagers accused of stealing
• interviewed for signs of affectionless psychopathy + families were interviewed in order to establish if they had experienced prolonged separation
• control group of non-criminal but emotionally disturbed young people
• found 14/44 were affectionless psychopaths
• 12/14 had experiences prolonged separation in first 2 years of life
• 5/30 had experiences separations
• 2/44 control had experienced separation
• concluded that prolonged early separation/deprivation caused affectionless psychopathy

Question 4

evaluate bowlby’s theory of maternal derivation

Answer 4

• 44 thieves may suffer from investigator bias = bowlby conducted the study related to his own theory and so may have been more biased towards the findings
• challenging evidence = rutter claimed bowlby muddled deprivation and privation and that the long-term effects are more likely to be as a result of privation rather than deprivation e.g. harlows monkey study
• high ecological validity = due to natural experiment the 44 thieves study has high ecological validity because it is a real-life situations
• lacks temporal validity = 1940s context, fathers likely to have been fighting in war which may have influenced the children’s behaviour, may not apply to other time periods
• problems with investigation = it would be unethical to subject children to deprivation on purposes, meaning there’s a reliance on natural experiments such as 44 thieves, meaning that its difficult to investigate this unless an opportunity arises