Later attachments

• childhood relationships


  affiliations with other people in childhood, including friends and classmates and with adults such as teachers
• adult relationships


  relationships children go on to have including friendships and working relationships but most critically relationships with romantic partners and the persons own children
• The continuity hypothesis


  idea that there is consistency between early emotional experiences and later relationships, and it sees children's attachment types being reflected in these later relationships. This idea is based upon the internal working model, which was proposed by Bowlby in his monotropic theory.
• if secure base as child when an adult you...


  seek functional relationships and behave functionally within them.
• if insecure avoidant as child when an adult you ..


  will be too emotionally involved or uninvolved in the relationship
• if insecure resistant as child when an adult you...


  will be controlling and argumentative
• affects of attachment on friendship

  Securely attached infants go on to form the better quality of friendship whereas insecurely attached usually go on to have friend difficulties ( Kerns 1994)
• affects of attachment on bullying


  Myron-Wilson and Smith 1998 assessed attachment type and bullying involvement using standard questionnaire in 196 children aged 7-11 from London. it was found that secure children were most likely to be the victims and insecure children the bullies
• affects of early relationships on later relationships study

  McCarthy 1999 studied 40 women who had been assessed when they were infants for attachment type. 620 replies to a love quiz (American) were analysed. Test had 3 sections: 1-respondents current most important relationship. 2-general love experiences. 3- Attachment type. 56% of respondents were identified as securely attached with 25% insecure- avoidant and 19% insecure resistant. Secure attachment would have long lasting, secure and romantic experiences whereas insecure avoidant would have jealousy and fear or intimacy
• evaluation of McCarthy's study in affects of early relationships on later relationships


  + supporting research from Bailey et al 99 women internal working model

  -questionnaire lacks validity because p might not be honest and relies on accurate recollection

  - researchers have exaggerated the significance of the influence of attachment on later relationships e.g. Clarke and Clarke describe the influence of infant attachment on later relationships as probabilistic. People are not doomed to always have bad relationships because they had attachment problems. They just have a greater risk of problems. By over emphasising this risk we become too pessimistic about peoples future.

  -concepts of internal working models is that there are theoretical problems. Internal working models are unconscious -we are not directly aware of their influence on us. So we would not really expect to get direct evidence about them through self - report methods which require conscious awareness. When participants self-report on their relationships they are relying on their conscious understanding of those relationships. At best, self -report give us indirect evidence about internal working models