Lesson 2: Stages of Attachment Flashcards
Who looked into stages of attachment?
Schaffer and Emerson (1964)
What did Schaffer and Emerson do?
Investigated development of attachment in infants using a longitudinal study (followed 60 infants and mothers for 2 years)
What are the stages of attachment?
Pre-Attachment, Indiscriminate Attachment, Discriminate attachment, Multiple attachment
What is Pre-Attachment? (0-3 months)
From 6 weeks, infants become attracted to other humans, preferring them to objects. Demonstrated by smiling at peoples faces.
What is Indiscriminate Attachment? (3-7 months)
Discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar people, smiling more at people they know. Still allow strangers to handle them
What is Discriminate Attachment? (7 months onwards)
Develop specific attachment to their primary attachment figure. Separation protest and stranger anxiety. Quality of the relationship, not quantity that matters the most in the formation of an attachment.
What are multiple attachments? (7 months onwards)
Develop strong emotional ties with other major caregivers (secondary attachments). Fear of strangers weakens but primary attachment stays strongest
What are the negatives of stages of attachment?
- Unreliable, based off mothers reports
- Biased Sample (working class population)
- Biased Sample (only individualist cultures not collectivist)
- No temporal validity (parental changes since 60s)
- Does not take individual differences into consideration
The role of the father
- Some research shows fathers provide play to complement mothers emotional role
- Same sex/single parent has no effect in development
- Schaffer and emerson found fathers less likely to be primary caregiver
- Men not psychologically equipped to deal with emotions (due to oxytocin or societal norms)
- 75% infants formed attachment to father after 18 months
