Learning Theory of Attachment

• developed by Dollard and Miller.

  states that infant attachment can be explained by learning theory aka cupboard love

  emphasises the importance of the attachment figure as a provider of food.
• classical conditioning

  • food is an unconditioned stimulus, which gives an unconditioned response of pleasure
  • caregiver starts as a neutral stimulus, which produces no response
  • caregiver and food are repeatedly exposed to the baby together, so the baby associates the caregiver with food
  • the neutral stimulus (the caregiver) becomes a conditioned stimulus, giving a conditioned response of pleasure
  • this is how learning theorists explain the development infant-caregiver attachments
• operant conditioning

  • babies feel discomfort when there hungry
  • they desire food to remove the discomfort
  • they find that by crying, the mother gives them food, which removes this discomfort
  • this is negative reinforcement
  • the mother is therefore associated with food and the baby will want to be close in order to prevent discomfort
  • this produces attachment behaviour (distress when separated)
• Schaffer and Emerson found that

  • fewer than half of infants primarily bonded with the person who typically fed them
  • rather, their attachments were towards those who were more responsive
  • this challenges the theory's proposal that food is the main driver of attachment formation
• Harlow found that monkeys formed a stronger attachment to the soft, comforting surrogate mother rather than the one that was made of hard wire but provided food.

  This challenges learning theory

  as it goes against the idea of attachments being based on food
• Lorenz's research involving goslings demonstrated the importance of imprinting on the first moving object they perceived.

  This contradicts the learning theory's propositions that attachment is a learned behaviour, suggesting an innate predisposition instead
• Learning theory is often critiqued for its reliance on animal research

  • questioning around the validity of generalising findings to humans
  • this perspective is overly simplistic and disregards the complexity of human behaviour