influence of early attachments on adult relationships Flashcards
What is the continuity hypothesis?
The idea that there is a consistency between early emotional experiences and later relationships
What becomes a template for future relationships?
The internal working model
Who creates the template of the internal working model?
Primary caregivers in childhood
What did McCarthy (1999) find?
- assessed quality of adult relationships
- women aged 25-44 with childhood insecure relationships
- Insecure avoidant = less successful adult romantic relationships
- Insecure resistant = problems forming non-romantic adult friendships
What did Kirkpatrick and Davis (1994) find?
- 300 couples dating for 3 years
- those who identified as having secure childhood attachments were more likely to have stable and satisfying relationships
What did Belsky (1999) find?
- Women with secure childhood attachments = less conflict with husbands on topics related to time spent together than the division of domestic labour than insecurely attached.
- More likely to manage conflict in mutually focused ways
- Explains why they experience less conflict in the first place and why their relationships are mutually rewarding.
What did Brennan and Shaver (1995) find?
- Insecure-avoidant = willing to engage in sex in the absence of strong feelings so more oral and anal than kissing and cuddling.
- More likely to have one night stands and have sex outside of established relationships
What did Kunce and Shaver (1994) find?
-Women with childhood insecure-resistant attachments = the highest levels of compulsive caregiving
What did Wood et al (2003) say? (eval)
- Quality of relationships is from the interaction of two people’s attachment styles.
- Insecurely attached people can have secure relationships if they are in relationships with securely attached people
Why is the internal working model not fully supported? (eval)
Steele et al (1998) found that only a small correlation of 0.17 between having a secure attachment type on childhood and early childhood
What did Zimmerman (2000) find? (eval)
Attachment style at 2-18 months old did not predict the quality of later relationships, while life events experienced had a much larger influence
What did Hamilton (1994) find? (eval)
Found that securely attached children went on to have insecurely-attached relationships if they had experienced negative life events
What is the temperament hypothesis? (eval)
It sees the quality of adult relationships being biologically determined from innate personality, suggesting attempts to develop better quality relationships by changing attachment styles to more positive ones would not work
Outline the procedure for Hazan and Shavers (1987) study.
- Love quiz in a local newspaper
- First part asked questions about their childhood relationships relating to attachment types
- Second part asked questions relating to their inner views about romantic relationships which related to the attachment types
What were the results for Hazan and Shaver’s study?
- Correlation between the type of childhood attachment and people’s later views on romantic love.
- Secure children were more likely to have happy and trustworthy relationships.
- Insecure-avoidant feared intimacy
- insecure-resistant children were more likely to be worried that they weren’t loved
