Explanations of attachment: Bowlby's theory

Question 1

What were Bowlby’s beliefs about attachment?

Answer 1

• Bowlby believed that infant attachment is innate and natural. This is to keep us alive and provides us with a survival advantage.

Question 2

What is the monotropic theory?

Answer 2

Monotropic theory (1958,1969):

• Bowlby believed that a child’s attachment is to one particular caregiver (monotropy). Bowlby believed this attachment was more important than others.

Question 3

What is the law of continuity?

Answer 3

• The more constant and predictable a child’s care, the better the quality of attachment

Question 4

What is the law of accumulated separation?

Answer 4

• The effects of separation from the mother ‘add up’ over time.

Question 5

What are social releasers?

Answer 5

• A set of innate ‘cute’ behaviours that encourage attention from adults. The purpose of these behaviours is to activate the adult attachment system and make the adult feel loved.

Question 6

What is the critical period?

Answer 6

• Babies have up to 2 years to form an attachment with their caregiver. If an attachment is not formed in this time, the child will find attachment very challenging as they grow older.

Question 7

What is the internal working model?

Answer 7

• 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 8

(AO3) What is a strength of Bowlby’s monotropic theory?
(1)

Answer 8

Support for social releasers:

• Evidence shows that cute infant behaviours are intended to initiate social interaction and that doing so is important to the baby.
• Brazelton et al (1975) - observed mothers and babies during their interactions, reporting the existence of interactional synchrony. They then extended their study from an observation to an experiment. Primary attachment figures were instructed to ignore their baby’s signals (social releasers). The baby initially showed some distress but, when the attachment figures continued to ignore them, some responded by curling up and lying motionless.

-The fact that children responded so strongly supports Bowlby’s ideas about the significance of infant social behaviour in eliciting caregiving.

Question 9

(AO3) What is a strength of Bowlby’s monotropic theory?
(2)

Answer 9

Support for internal working models:

• The idea of internal working models is testable because it predicts the patterns of attachment will be passed on from one generation to the next.
• Bailey et al (2007) -assessed 99 mothers with one-year-old babies on the quality of their attachment to their 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 parents 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.

Question 10

(AO3) What is a weakness of Bowlby’s monotropic theory?

Answer 10

Mixed evidence for monotropy:

• Bowlby believed that babies generally formed one attachment to their primary caregiver. Only after this point could they form multiple attachments.
• However, Schaffer and Emerson (1964) found that a small minority of babies formed multiple attachments at the same time as well as one person.
• It is unclear whether there is something unique about the first attachment.
• Suess et al (1992) - show that attachment to the mother is more important in predicting later behaviour. However, this could mean that attachment to the primary attachment figure is just stronger than other attachments, not necessarily that it is different in quality.