influence of early attachment on later relationships

• adult relationships - those relationships the child goes on to have later in life as an adult. these include friendships and working relationships but most critical relationships w/ romantic partners and the person’s own children
• childhood relationships - affiliations w/ other people in childhood including friend and classmates and with the adults such as teachers
• internal working model - our mental representations 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
• further explanation of the IWM

  the quality of a baby’s first attachment is crucial bc the template will powerfully affect the nature of their future relationships. a baby whose 1st experience is of a loving relationship w/ a reliable attachment figure will tend to assume this is how relationships are meant to be. they will seek out functional relationships and behave functionally within them.

  a child with bad experiences of their 1st attachment will bring these bad experiences to later relationships, they may struggle to form relationships in the 1st place or they may behave inappropriately within them, displaying I-A or I-R behaviour
• relationships in childhood: kerns (1994)

  attachment type is associated w/ the quality of peer relationships in childhood. securely attached babies tend to go on to form the best childhood friendships whereas insecurely attached babies later have difficult friendships
• relationships in childhood: myron - wilson and smith (1998)

  bullying behaviour can be predicted by attachment type

  • assessed attachment type and bullying involvement using standard questionnaires in 196 children aged 7-11 from london
  • securely attached children very unlikely to be involved in bullying
  • I-A children were the most likely to be victims and I-R children were more likely to be bullies