Influence of early attachment on later relationships

Question 1

Internal working model

Answer 1

• Acts as a template for future childhood and adult relationships
• Quality of a baby’s first att is crucial because this template will powerfully affect the nature of their future relationships
• Baby with loving first att will tend to assume this is how relationships are meant to be - they’ll seek out functional relationships and behave functionally within them (secure att)
• Baby with bad experiences of first att may find it hard later in life to form relationships and when they do they may not behave appropriately (insecure-avoidant or insecure-resistant)

Question 2

Relationships in childhood

Answer 2

• Att type is associated with the quality of peer relationships in childhood
• Securely att babies - tend to form best quality childhood friendships
• Insecurely att babies - tend to later have friendship difficulties
• Bullying can be predicted by att type
• Researchers assessed att type and bullying involvement using questionnaires in 196 children aged 7-11 from London - Secure=unlikely to be involved in bullying - Insecure-avoidant=most likely to be victims of bullying - Insecure-resistant=most likely to be bully

Question 3

Relationships in adulthood

Answer 3

• IWM affects romantic and parental relationships
• Research studied 40 women who had been assessed when they were babies to establish their att type - those who were secure had best adult friendships and romantic relationships - insecure-resistant had particular problems maintaining friendships - insecure-avoidant struggled with intimacy in romantic relationships
• IWM affects child’s ability to parent their own children - we base our parenting style on our IWM so att types tends to be passed on through generations

Question 4

Att and later relationships - Evaluation - Strength

Answer 4

• Research support
• Research has found that early att consistently predicts later att, emotional wellbeing and att to own children
• Strength of relationship between early att and later development depends on att type and aspect of later development
• Means secure att babies appear to have advantages for future development compared to disorganised att

Question 5

Att and later relationships - Evaluation - Limitation

Answer 5

• Validity issues with retrospective studies
• Most studies aren’t longitudinal and instead ask adolescent or adult p’s questions about their relationships with parents and identify att type from that
• Causes 2 validity problems
• 1) asking questions relies on honesty and accuracy
• 2) very hard to know whether early att is being assessed or adult att
• Means measures of early att used in most studies may be confounded