L8 - The Influence Of Early Attachment On Childhood & Adult Relationships

Question 1

Internal working model

Answer 1

• Described as schema for what relationships should entail
• Comes from baby’s first attachment
  -‘’operable’’ model of self and attachment partner, based on their joint attachment history – it is operable because it is used to predict the behaviour of other people in the future.

Question 2

What is the affect of the first attachment

Answer 2

• form a mental representation of it - quality is crucial as acts as template for future
• Loving first attachment= functional relationships
• Bad first relationship= struggle to form relationships/ inappropriate behaviour
• Bowlby predicated there would be continuities between early attachment and later social emotional behaviour (continuity hypothesis)

Question 3

Support for continuity if early attachment & later social/emotional behaviour

Answer 3

• numerous longitudinal studies - Prior & Glaser (2006) provide summary:
• Secure attachment is associated with positive outcomes such as less emotional dependence, ambition and interpersonal harmony
• Avoidant attachment is linked with aggressiveness, and generally negative effect
• Resistant attachment is associated with greater anxiety and withdrawn behaviour

Question 4

Influence of attachment on childhood relationships studies

Answer 4

Sroufe et al. (2005)
Myron-Wilson & Smith (1998)

Question 5

Sroufe et al. (2005)

Answer 5

• Minnesota child parent study
• found continuity between early attachment and later emotional/social behaviour
• Individuals who were classified as securely attached in infancy were highest rated for social competence later in childhood, were less isolated and more popular, and more empathetic
• This can be explained in terms of the internal working model because securely attached infants have higher expectations that others are friendly and trusting, and this would enable easier relationships with others

Question 6

Myron-Wilson & Smith (1998)

Answer 6

• assessed attachment type and bullying involvement using standard questionnaires in 196 children aged 7 – 11 from London
• Securely attached children were unlikely to be involved in bullying
• Insecure-avoidant attached children were the most likely to be victims of bullying (act like they don’t care, leads to them being bullied)
• insecure-resistant attached children were the most likely to be bullies (helps them make friends & cling to them)
• This may be because insecure attached children did not have a strong internal working model due to the type of attachment they had with the primary caregiver

Question 7

Evaluation of early attachment on childhood relationships (Strength)

Answer 7

• supporting research from both the Minnesota study and Myron-Wilson and Smith’s study.
• Minnesota study is longitudinal - follows same children throughout their life. So conclusions drawn from this study on the impact of the internal working model on childhood friendships is strong.
  E.g. if a child has poor relationships with their friends, then this can be followed and traced back to find the cause of this? Was it due to a poor internal working model during the forming of their first attachment?

Question 8

Evaluation of early attachment on childhood relationships (weakness)

Answer 8

• a problem with some research on the impact of early attachment on childhood friendships is that the methodology used is flawed
  E.g. Myron-Wilson and Smith study, they used standard questionnaires to assess attachment type and school friendships – the questionnaire itself may be a victim of social desirability bias as many participants may pretend that they have a secure attachment – to portray themselves in a positive light whereas in reality they may not have had a secure attachment.
• Also, many participants could have lied about the bullying either pretending to be victims or not being bullied.
• This means that we should be cautious in making judgements about the impact of early attachment on childhood friendships.

Question 9

The influence of attachments on adult relationships – the role of the internal working model

Answer 9

Studied by Hazan & Shaver (1987)

Question 10

Hazan & Shaver (1987) aim & hypothesis

Answer 10

• explore the possibility that attachment theory offers a perspective on adult romantic love and to create a framework for understanding love, loneliness and grief at different points in the life cycle
  Predicted that:
• correlation between adults’ attachment styles and the type of parenting they received
• Adults with different attachment styles will display different characteristic mental models (internal representations) of themselves and their major social- interaction partners

Question 11

Hazan & Shaver (1987) procedure

Answer 11

• placed a ‘Love Quiz’ in an American small-town newspaper (Rocky Mountain News)
• The quiz asked questions about current attachment experiences and about attachment history to identify current and childhood attachment types.
• The questionnaire also asked about attitudes towards love – an assessment of the internal working model.

Question 12

Hazan & Shaver (1987) samples

Answer 12

Sample 1 - analysed 620 responses, 205 from men and 415 from women between 14-82 years of age.
Of the sample, 91% were heterosexual, 42% were married, 28% were divorced or widowed, 9% were living in with their partner and 31% were dating (some fitted more than one category)

Sample 2 – 108 students (38 men and 70 women) who answered additional items focussing more on the ‘self’ side of the mental model (as opposed to their partner), as well as items measuring loneliness.

Question 13

Findings (data)

Answer 13

Securely attached - 56% (both) - find easy getting close to others, don’t worry about getting close to someone/abandonment
Insecure-avoidant - 23% (sample 1), 25% (sample 2) - uncomfortable being close to others, feels nervous, hard to depend on others, feel uncomfortable being intimate
Insecure resistant- 19% (sample 1), 20% (sample 2) - reel tuant to get close as they want, worry that partner doesn’t love them, wants to merge completely with person - desire scares others

Question 14

General findings

Answer 14

• securely attached described the most important love relationships they ever had as ‘happy, friendly and trusting’. These pps had longer lasting relationships and if they married were not likely to divorce.
• if securely attached they believed in lasting love, trusted others, and fount themselves as likeable
• insecure avoidant - more doubtful about existence/durability of love, said didn’t need love partners to be happy, also revealed jealousy & fear of inatimacy
• both insecure types vulnerable to loneliness - insecure-resistant (sample 2) - most vulnerable

Question 15

Hazan & Shaver (1987) conclusion

Answer 15

• % of adults in diff attachment types match those of children in strange situation studies
• correlation between adults’ attachment style and their memories of parenting styles they received is similar to Ainsworth’s findings, where children’ attachment styles were correlated with the degree of sensitivity shown by mothers.
• Adults mental models differ according to attachment styles. Securely attached are more positive and optimistic about themselves and (potential) love partners, compared with either insecurely attached types.

Question 16

Behaviours influenced by IWM

Answer 16

• childhood friendships
• poor parenting
• romantic relationships
• mental health

Question 17

Childhood friendships

Answer 17

• Minnesota child-parent study found continuity between early attachment and later emotional/social behaviour.
• Individuals who were classified as securely attached in infancy were highest rated for social competence later in childhood, were less isolated and more popular, and more empathetic.
• can be explained by internal working model because securely attached infants have higher expectations that others are friendly and trusting, and this would enable easier relationships with others.

Question 18

Poor parenting

Answer 18

• Harlow’s research with monkeys also demonstrated a link between poor attachment and later difficulties with parenting.
• In a study by Quinton et al. this showed that the same is true in humans.
• The lack of an internal working model means that individuals lack a reference point to subsequently form relationships with their own children.

Question 19

Romantic relationships

Answer 19

The study by Hazan and Shaver demonstrated a link between early attachment type and later relationships. Individuals who were securely attached with their parents and longer-lasting romantic relationships.

Question 20

Mental health

Answer 20

• the lack of an attachment during the critical period in development would result in lack of internal working model.
• Children with attachment disorder have no preferred attachment figure, an inability to interact and relate to others that is evident before the age of 5, and experience of severe neglect or frequent change of caregivers.
• For some time a condition called attachment disorder has been recognised but it has recently been classed as a distinct psychiatric condition and included in the DSM.

Question 21

Other research into IWM

Answer 21

Belsky (1999)
Bailey et al. (2007)

Question 22

Belsky (1999)

Answer 22

reported that women with childhood secure attachments experienced less conflict with husbands on topics related to time spent together and household division of labour than insecurely attached women.

Question 23

Bailey et al. (2007)

Answer 23

• found that attachment types tends to be passed on through generations of a family
• They considered the attachments of 99 mothers to their babies and to their own mothers.
• Mother-baby attachment was assessed using the Strange Situation and mother –own mother attachment was assessed using an adult attachment interview.
• The majority of women had the same attachment classification both to their babies and their own mothers. This suggests that the concept of an internal working model could be genetic/innate?

Question 24

Evaluation of the influence of early attachment on later relationships: internal working model

Answer 24

• evidence on continuity of attachment type is mixed
• most studies measuring the IWM have issues of validity
• association doesn’t mean causality
• the influence of early attachment is probabilistic but not definite

Question 25

Evidence on continuity of attachment type is mixed

Answer 25

• IWM predict continuity between the security of an infant’s attachment and that of its later relationships, i.e. attachment type of infancy is usually the same as that characterising the person’s later relationships.
• Evidence for this continuity is mixed.
• Some studies such as Bailey et al (2007) do show that attachment type is passed on through generations e.g, securely attached mothers to their own mothers also had securely attached children.
• Not all studies however, support the internal working model for example Zimmerman (2000) assessed infant attachment type and adolescent attachment to parents and found there was very little relationships between quality of infant and adolescent attachment.
• This is a problem because it is not what we expect if the child’s IWM is important for future relationships.

Question 26

Most studies measuring the IWM have validity issues

Answer 26

• Most studies that test the IWM use self report techniques whereby the parents are replying to questionnaires and interviews.
• This means that parents may show social desirability bias by making out that they do have a secure relationship with their children – and because very few researchers use the Strange Situation to measure attachment types, it makes it difficult to prove if indeed the attachment patterns are correct.
• Furthermore parents may be asked about their attachment relationship with their teenagers during early childhood. This is retrospective and parents may forget, lie or exaggerate the kind of attachment they had with their teenagers when they were infants.
• These methodological issues then affect the validity of the research because information given by the participants may not be entirely accurate.

Question 27

Association doesn’t mean casualty

Answer 27

• in studies where infant attachment type is associated with the quality of later relationships the implication is that infant attachment type causes the attachment type in later relationships.
• However, there are alternative explanations for the continuity that often exists between infant and later relationships.
• A third environmental factor such as parenting style might have a direct effect on both attachment and the child’s ability to form relationships with other people not to forget also that the parental relationship with each other could also be relevant.
• Alternatively the child’s temperament may influence both infant attachment and the quality of later relationships – in others words, if an infant has a happy and calm temperament it could be that this influences not only the type of attachment relationships with the primary caregiver but also relationships in the future.
• Thus, research is correlational – because we are looking at early childhood attachments and later relationships, the research can at best be correlational as we can say that there is a relationship between the two but we can’t infer cause and effect.

Question 28

The influence of early of attachment is probabilistic but not definite

Answer 28

• seems very likely that the quality of infant attachments is an influence on later relationships.
• Although researchers such as Bowlby and many others have probably exaggerated the significance of the influence.
  E.g. Clark and Clark (1998) describe the influence of infant attachment on later relationships as probable but not definite.
• People are not always doomed to have bad relationships just because they had problems with their attachments in infancy.
• We could say that they have greater risk of problems although this is a further issue in the sense that we are still being pessimistic about people’s futures.
• This questions whether on balance is it better to know the risks or is it better to avoid such research because it is potentially damaging