Schaffer's stages of attachment Flashcards
Schaffer’s 4 stages of attachment
- Asocial
- Indiscriminate attachment
- Specific attachment
- Multiple attachments
Stage 1 - Asocial stage
Age - 0-8 weeks
- Usually lasts between 6-8 weeks after birth
-No discrimination between different humans
-Preference for humans over non-humans
-Use familiar adults as a secure base
-Happier in presence of humans than when alone
Stage 2 - Indiscriminate stage
Age - 2-7 months
- From six weeks to six months
-Can tell people apart
-Stronger bonds start to grow with familiar adults
-No fear of strangers
-Smile at anyone
-Accept comfort from any adult
-Prefer faces to non-faces
Stage 3 - Specific attachment
Age - 7-12 months
- Usually develops around 7 months old
-Strong display of separation anxiety
-Distress in the company of strangers
-Primary attachment to one particular individual (the person who shows most sensitivity to their signals)
-Smile more at familiar faces than unfamiliar faces
Stage 4 - Multiple attachments
Age - 1 year onwards
-From around 10 months old
-Attachment with primary carer grows
-Increased interest in developing bonds with others
-Form secondary attachments with familiar adults with whom they spend time (e.g. father, grandparents)
Strength of Schaffer - good external validity
- Most of the observations (apart from the stranger anxiety) were made by parents during ordinary activities and then reported to the researchers
-If the researchers were making the observations then this could have distracted them or made them feel more anxious
-Therefore it is likely that the babies behaved naturally while being observed
-They compared the mother’s self-report with observations of the baby’s behaviour while they visited them at home (for example, when the mother left the room)
-They found that the interview data matched their observations 92% of the time
Limitation of Schaffer and Emerson - temporal validity
This is because parental care of children has changed since the 1960s
Many more women go out to work so children are cared for outside the home
Research shows that fathers staying at home to care for children has quadrupled since 1960s.
We cannot conclude that stages of attachment would be the same today
Temporal validity
The extent we can generalise results to other times in history
Schaffer and Emerson limitation - cultural bias
- The theory suggests that the stages are inflexible
- E.g. it is normal for single attachments to come before multiple attachments
-However, in other collectivist cultures, multiple attachments may be formed from the outset. This suggests that the stage model applies only to individualist cultures
-Cultural bias occurs if the stage theory becomes a standard by which other cultures are judged and they may consequently be classed as abnormal
- E.g. it is normal for single attachments to come before multiple attachments
Counterpoint to external validity
-There are issues when asking mothers to be the observer
-They are unlikely to be objective observers
-They might have been biased in what they observed/reported
-They might not have noticed signs or misremembered them
-Therefore even if the babies behaved naturally, their behaviour may not have been recorded accurately
Poor evidence for asocial stage
-Hard to measure such young babies
-Babies less than 2 months old will display anxiety in everyday situations in subtle, quite hard to observe ways
-This makes it difficult for mothers to report back to the researchers on signs of anxiety and attachment at this age group
-Therefore the babies may be quite social, but appear to be social because of the flawed methods
Real world application of Schaffer and Emerson
-Schaffer’s stages have a practical application in day care (babies are cared for outside their home by a non-family member)
-In the asocial and indiscriminate attachment stage, day care is likely to be easier as babies can be comforted by any skilled adult
-Schaffer and Emerson’s research shows that starting day care with an unfamiliar adult may be more problematic during the specific attachment stag
