Influence of early attachment

• Childhood relationships: Affiliations with other people in childhood, including friends, classmates and teachers.
• Adult relationships: Those relationships the child goes on to have later in life as an adult. These include friendships and working relationships but most critically relationships with romantic partners and the person's own children.
• Internal working model: Our mental representation of the world, e.g. the representation we have of our relationship to our primary attachment figure. This model affects our future relationships because it carries our perception of what relationships are like.
• Bowlby (1969): Suggested that a baby's first relationship with their primary caregiver leads to a mental representation of what relationships should be like, it acts as a template for the future adult relationships.
• • The quality of a first attachment is crucial because it will powerfully affect the nature of their future relationships.
  • If it is a good relationship the baby will assume this is how all relationships should be, they will seek out a functional relationship.
  • A child with a bad first relationship will bring these bad experiences into later life and may struggle to form adult relationships.
• • Attachment type is associated with the quality of peer relationships in childhood.
  • Securely attached babies tend to go on to form the best quality childhood friendships.
  • Insecurely attached babies may have difficulty forming these friendships.
• Rowan Myron-Wilson and Peter Smith (1998):

  • Assessed attachment type and bullying involvement using questionnaires.
  • Secure children were unlikely to be involved in bullying , insecure-avoidant children were likely to be victims and Insecure-resistant were most likely to be bullies.
• Hazan and Shaver (1987): Procedure-

  • They analyzed 620 replied to a love quiz.
  • This quiz assessed the persons current relationship, general love experiences and their attachment type.
• Hazan and Shaver (1987): Findings-

  • Those with secure attachments were more likely to have good long lasting relationships.
  • Avoidants tended to reveal jealousy and fear of intimacy's.
  • This suggests that attachment behavior is reflected into our romantic relationships.
• Heidi Bailey et al (2007):

  • Considered attachments of mothers to their babies and their attachments to their own primary caregiver.
  • The majority of women have the same attachment type with their children as with their primary caregivers.
• Evaluation: Influence of early attachment (Strength)-

  • Research support.
  • Many studies link the idea of early attachment to later development.
  • Shows that secure attachment helps in later development.
• Evaluation: Influence of early attachment (limitation)-

  • Research support counterpoint
  • Not all evidence supports the existence of close links between early attachment to later development.
  • It isn't clear to what extent they could affect each other.
• Evaluation: Influence of early attachment (limitation)-

  • Validity issues with retrospective studies.
  • Validity problems are caused due to most studies not being longitudinal meaning they don't follow the same people from childhood to adulthood.
  • The questionnaires used also have issues as it means someone could lie about their answers.
• Evaluation: Influence of early attachment (limitation)-

  • Confounding variables
  • Many different things can effect the way someone develops and it may not always be due to the attachment type.