The influence of early attachment

• The continuity hypothesis

  Your adult attachment type will be the same as what you had as a child

  Attachment type continues throughout life
• The internal working model

  This is the process by which the continuity process works. It is a schema for relationships. Your experience of attachment in childhood will develop a model of what you expect from future relationships and how you expect to be treated
• If a child has a secure attachment and a sensitive caregiver they will have positive views of love. They will see themselves as worthy of being loved and more likely to form secure adult relationships
• If a child has an insecure attachment and a parent who rejects them then they may have negative views of love and feel unworthy of being loved and are likely to have insecure adult relationships
• Secure adults

  Love experiences - Relationships are positive

  Adult view of relationships - trusts others and believes in enduring love

  Memories of the mother-child relationships - the positive image of the mother as dependable and caring
• Resistant adults

  Love experiences- Preoccupied/obsessed by love

  Adult view on relationships- Fall in love easily but have trouble finding true love

  Memories of the mother-child relationship- Conflicting memories of mother being positive and negative
• Avoidant adults

  Love experiences - Fearful of closeness

  Adult view of relationships - love isn't durable nor necessary for happiness

  Memories of the mother-child relationships - Remembers mother as cold and rejecting
• Hazan and Shaver (1987)'s Love Quiz Aim :

  To test Bowlby's idea of an internal working model they wanted to see if there was a correlation between the infants attachment type and their future romantic relationships
• Hazan and Shaver (1987)'s Love Quiz Procedure:

  Hazan and Shaver placed a survey called the love quiz in an American newspaper called the Rocky Mountain News. The survey asked about current romantic relationships and about attachment history in order to identify childhood attachment type they were also asked about their attitudes towards love

  620 people aged 14-82 replied to the quiz (205 men and 415 women)
• Hazan and Shaver (1987)'s Love Quiz Findings:

  • Adult attachment reflected the frequency of childhood attachment types 56% were secure, 25% were avoidant, 19% were resistant

  • There was a positive correlation between attachment type and adult relationships

  •Securely attached adults:

  -had long lasting relationships- lasting 10 years on average

  -Described love experiences as happy, friendly and trusting

  -Were less likely to have been unfaithful

  -Had a positive internal working model

  • Insecurely attached adults:

  -Felt true love was rare and fell in and out of love easily, more divorced
• Hazan and Shaver (1987)'s Love Quiz Conclusion:

  Bowlby's internal working model was supported as it was found that infant attachment type predicted attitudes towards love
• Evaluation of Hazan and Shaver's Love Quiz :

  ❌ Self report technique this lead to a social desirability bias as people would want to be seen in a better way than they are thus leading to demand characteristics

  ❌Some people may not understand their own relationship behaviour as a result some results may not be accurate

  ❌ Retrospective evidence, They asked adults about their childhood this is negative as they may remember incorrectly as a result this could have lead to demand characteristics

  ❌The sampling was volunteer sampling this is a problem as only a certain type of person would answer
• Evaluation of Hazan and Shaver's Love Quiz: (2)

  ❌ Ethnocentric the all American audience represents American ideals which may not be relevant in other countries for example Japan being a collectivist culture

  ❌Gender bias - there were aver double Women than men therefore the result may be inaccurate to the whole population

  ❌Correlational data - relationships between early experience and later relationships aren't 100% this means that some people can overcome insecure childhood attachment
• Evaluation of Hazan and Shaver's Love Quiz : (3)

  ❌ Ethics information about early life can be sensitive therefore informed consent and a good debrief is necessary
• Childhood friends

  Securely attached infants have the expectation that others are friendly and trusting, which means that they will easily make new friends . This was evident in the findings of the Minnesota study where securely attached children were more popular , less isolated and rated high in social competence