influence of attachment

• Role of internal working model

  Attachment to the primary caregiver provides a child with an (schema) understanding of relationships or an internal working model. The IWM acts as a template for future relationships (continuity hypothesis), so this affects later (adult) relationships and own’s success as a parent.

  Someone with a positive internal working model will become a sensitive and responsive caregiver and have functional friendships and romantic relationships.

  Someone with a negative internal working model will become inconsistent in caregiving or neglectful and have dysfunctional friendships and romantic relationships.
• quality of peer relationships in childhood

  Securely attached children form the best quality of childhood friendships. Insecurely attached children have friendship difficulties (Kerns, 1994).

  Attachment type and bullying

  Myron-Wilson and Smith (1998)

  • securely attached are unlikely to be involved in bullying
  • insecure avoidant= victims of bullying
  • insecure resistant= are the bullies
• Relationship between early attachment type and later parenting

  Harlow’s monkeys - long term effects becoming poor parents – some attacked and even killed their offspring. Parenting style is passed on to the next generation.

  Bailey et al (2007)

  • mothers who had reported poor attachments to their own mothers had poor quality attachments to their own children
  • supports the internal working model idea and the continuity hypothesis
• attachment type and adulthood with later romantic partners

  • securely attached had most successful romantic relationships later in life
  • insecure avoidant struggled with intimacy and have difficult romantic relationships
  • insecure resistant had problems maintaining friendships and relationships in adulthood
• Hazan and Shaver (1987)

  Hazan and Shaver’s research on types of adult relationships links with Ainsworth’s secure, insecure-avoidant, insecure-resistant types.

  Procedure:

  • 620 replies to a ‘love quiz’ printed in an American local newspaper were analysed.

  The quiz assessed respondents’:

  • current or most important relationship.
  • general love experiences such as the number of partners
  • attachment type.

  Questions asked about issues such as fear of closeness, jealousy, and obsessiveness.

  Findings

  • 56% of the respondents were identified as securely attached.
  • 25% anxious avoidant.
  • 19% anxious resistant.

  Securely attached respondents most likely to have good, long-lasting romantic relationships. Least likely to divorce.

  Avoidant respondents tended to be independent and fear intimacy Most likely to divorce.

  Resistant respondents were clingy, insecure, jealous, and uncomfortable with independence and fear abandonment.
• Main et al (1985) The Adult Attachment Interview

  Ppts interviewed about their relationship with parents, if they had ever felt rejected and if early experiences influenced adult relationships, and classified as secure, dismissing, preoccupied or unresolved/disorganised.

  Main et al (1985) categories of adult relationships could be predicted from childhood attachments.
• evaluation 1

  P Secure attachment in childhood is linked to good friendships, good adult relationships and parenting.

  E Simpson et al (2007) Children who were securely attached at the age of one were rated as having higher social competence aged 16.

  E Hazen and Shaver’s love quiz supports a relationship between early attachment type and later romantic relationships.

  L Early attachment type does predict later adult relationships.
• evaluation 2

  P Children can recover from deprivation or privation and form effective adult relationships.

  E Koluchova - identical Czechoslovakian twins who were discovered at age 7 had been kept locked in a cellar with only each other, been beaten, and not formed any attachment with adult caregiver.

  E They were adopted, gained speech, normal IQ levels by age 15 and went on to marry.

  L Attachment type in childhood may not be reflected in adult relationships.
• evaluation 3

  P Self-report techniques to assess quality of childhood/adult relationships and assessment of early attachment pattern is retrospective.

  E Asking questions relies on the honesty of participants and accurate recall of childhood relationships.

  E Self report methods are plagued by social desirability and recall may not be accurate.

  L If people don’t answer questionnaires truthfully or memory is inaccurate the results of the questionnaire will not be valid. There are issues with the use of self-report techniques to assess quality of childhood and adult relationships.
• evaluation 4

  P It is difficult to establish cause and effect between early attachment history and later relationships.

  E Several studies indicate correlation, but this is not the same as causation.

  E Kagan (1984) suggested temperament is why early attachments and later relationships are similar. The temperament hypothesis suggests the quality of adult relationships is determined by personality.

  L Children with a pleasant disposition are more likely to form warm relationships with parents and later in life. Adult relationship success may not be linked to attachment in childhood.
• evaluation 5

  P The influence of infant attachment on future relationships is exaggerated and deterministic.

  E There are negative assumptions that the relationship is cause and effect – if you are insecurely attached as a child, you will go on to have insecure and unsuccessful adult relationships.

  E Clarke and Clarke (1998) People are not doomed to always have bad relationships because they had attachment problems.

  L Becker-Stoll et al (2008) found no evidence of continuity in 43 people using the adult attachment interview. It is possible to have an insecure attachment in childhood and form successful adult relationships.