Influence of early attachment on later relationships

• What are childhood relationships?

  • Affiliations with other people in childhood, including friends and classmates and with adults such as teachers
• What are 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 persons own children
• What is the internal working model?

  • Our mental representations of the world
  • EG 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
• Internal working model:

  • Acts as a template for future childhood and adult relationships
  • The quality of a baby’s first attachment is crucial because this template will powerfully affect the nature of their future relationships. A baby whose first experience of a loving attachment figure will believe that’s what all relationships have to be like. They will then seek out functional relationships and behave functionally within them, IE without being to uninvolved or emotionally close (insecure-avoidant) or being controlling or argumentative (insecure-resistant)
  • A child whose first experience of their attachment figure was bad, will bear this to later relationships. May mean they struggle with forming relationships or not behave appropriately with them , displaying insecure-avoidant and insecure-resistant behaviour
• Relationships in childhood:

  • 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 whereas insecurely attached babies later have friendship difficulties (Kerns 1994)
  • Bullying behaviour can be predicted by attachment figures. Myron-Wilson and Smith (1998) assessed attachment type and bullying involvement using standard questionnaires in 196 children aged 7-11 from London. Secure children were very unlikely to be involved in bullying. Insecure-avoidant children were the most likely to be victims and insecure-resistant children were most likely to be bullies.
• Relationships in adults:

  • IWM affect to major adult experiences - romantic and parental relationships with their own children
• The love quiz - relationships in adults

  • Hazan and shaver (1987) conducted a classic study of the association between attachment and adult relationships
  • Procedure- analysed 620 replies to a ‘love quiz’ printed in an American paper. Quiz had 3 sections, first assessed current or most important relationships. Second was to assess general love experiences such as number of partners. Third section assessed attachment type by asking respondents to chose which 3 statements best described their feelings
  • Findings and Conclusion- 56%= securely attached, 25% insecure-avoidant, 19% insecure-resistant. securely attached were most likely to have good and longer-lasting romantic experiences. Avoidant participants revealed jealousy and fear of intimacy. Findings suggest that patterns of attachment behaviour are reflected in romantic relationships.
• McCartney’s research- adult relationships

  • 1999
  • Studied 40 adult women who had been assessed when they were babies to establish their early attachment type.
  • Those assessed as securely attached babies had the best adult friendships and romantic relationships.
  • Adults classed as insecure-resistant as babies had particular problems maintaining friendships whilst those classed as insecure-avoidant struggled with intimacy in romantic relationships.
• How does the IWM affect relationships in adulthood?

  • Affects a child’s ability to parent their own children. People tend to base their parenting style on their internal working model so attachment type tends to be passed on through generations of a family.
  • Bailey et al (2007), considered the attachments of 99 mothers to their Babies and to their own mothers. Mother-baby attachment was assessed using Strange Situation and mother’s attachment to their own mother was assessed using an adult attachment interview. The majority of woman had the same attachment classification both to their babies and their own mothers.
• EVALUATION- research support- STRENGTH

  • Supporting evidence
  • Reviews of the evidence have concluded that early attachment consistently predicts later attachment, emotional wellbeing and attachment to own children. How strong the relationship is between early attachment type and later development depends both on the attachment type and aspect of later development. Insecure-avoidant attachment seems to convey fairly mild disadvantages for any aspect of development, disorganised attachment is strongly associated with later mental disorder.
  • Means that secure attachment as a baby appears to convey advantages for future development while disorganised attachment appears to seriously disadvantage children
• EVALUATION- validity issues with retrospective studies- LIMITATION

  • Early attachment is assessed retrospectively
  • Most research on the link between early attachment and later development are not longitudinal. Instead researchers usually ask adolescent or adult participants questions their relationships with parents, and identify attachment type from this. Causes two validity problem. First, asking questions rely on the honesty and accurate perception from the participants. Second, it means it is very hard to know whether what is being assessed is early attachment or in fact adult attachment.
  • Means that the measures of early attachment used in most studies may be confounded with other factors making them meaningless.
• EVALUATION- confounding variables- LIMITATION

  • Existence of confounding variables
  • Some studies do assess attachment in infancy, which means that the assessment of early attachment is valid. However, even these studies may have validity problems because associations between attachment quality and later development may be affected by confounding variables. For example parenting style may influence other attachment quality and later development. Alternatively genetically-influenced personality may be an influence on both factors.
  • Means that we can never be entirely sure that is early attachment and not some other factor that is influencing later development.
• EVALUATION- research limitation- LIMITATION

  • Not all evidence supports the existence of close links between early attachment and later development.
  • For example, the Regensburg longitudinal study (Becker-Stoll 2008) followed 43 individuals from one year of age. At age 16 attachment was assessed using the adult attachment interview and there was no evidence of continuity
  • Means that it is not clear to what extent the quality of early attachment really predicts later development. There may be other important factors.
• EVALUATION- balancing opportunity and risk- LIMITATION

  • Seems likely that the influence of early attachment is probabilistic (Clarke and Clarke 1998). Means that an insecure attachment does not invariably cause increased risk of later developmental problems- no one is inevitably going to have successful romantic relationships because of their early attachment experiences. It may be more likely but a host of other factors are involved.
  • By knowing someone’s attachment status we have an opportunity to intervene and help their development. However, we may also become too pessimistic and create a self-fulfilling prophecy.