Influence of early attachment on adult relationships Flashcards
What was McCarthy’s research?
Assessed the quality of adult relationships of 40 women aged 25-44 with childhood insecure attachments. Women with insecure-avoidant attachments had less successful adult romantic relationships while those with insecure-resistant attachments had problems forming non-romantic adult friendships supporting the idea of an internal working model
What was Kirkpatrick and Davis research?
Studied 300 dating couples for three years finding that those identified as having secure childhood attachments were more likely to have stable and satisfying relationships supporting the idea of continuity from an internal working model
What was Belsky’s research?
Reported that women with childhood secure attachments experienced less conflict with husbands on topics related to time spent together than the division of domestic labour than insecurely attached women. They were also more likely to manage conflict in mutually focused ways explaining why they experience less conflict in the first place
What was Brennan and Shever’s research?
Found that individuals classified as insecure avoidant were willing to engage in sex in the absence of strong feelings of love or an enduring relationships and similarly Hazan and Shaver found that such individuals were more likely to have one night stands and sex outside relationships and preferred purely sexual contact e.g oral sex to more emotional intimate sexual contact such as kissing and cuddling again supporting internal working model
What was the Kunce and Shaver research?
Found that women classed as having childhood insecure resistant attachment reported the highest level of compulsive caregiving agreeing with statements such as ‘I cant seem to stop from mothering my partner too much’
What is the evaluation from Wood et al?
He believes the quality of relationship results from the interaction of two people’s attachment styles. Therefore insecurely attached people can have secure relationships if they are in relationships with securely attached people
What is a weakness of the internal working model?
It is not fully supported. Steele et al found that only a small correlation of 0.17 between having a secure attachment type on childhood and early adult-hood while Zimmerman found that attachment styles at 12-18 months did not predict the quality of later relationships while life events had a much larger influence
What did Hamilton find (evaluation)?
Securely attached children went on to have insecurely attached relationships if they had experienced negative life events
What is the temperament hypothesis (evaluation)?
Sees the quality of adult relationships as being determined biologically from innate personality, suggesting that attempts to develop better quality relationships by changing people’s attachment styles to more positive ones would not work
