Influence of early attachment on later relationships

• How does the internal working model influence later relationships?

  • IWM is a mental representation of a child's first relationship with their primary caregiver - acts as a mental template for future childhood and adult relationships
  • Child with a loving and reliable relationship w/ PCG will assume that this is how relationships are meant to be
  • Will seek out functional relationships and behave accordingly
  • However a child w/ bad experiences may struggle to form relationships or display avoidant and resistant behaviour to friends and partners
• How does attachment affect relationships in childhood?

  • Kerns (1994): securely attached babies form the best quality childhood friendships, insecurely attached babies have friendship difficulties
  • Wilson and Smith (1998): found secure children were very unlikely to be involved in bullying, avoidant were most likely to be victims and resistant were most likely to be bullies
• How does attachment affect romantic relationships in adulthood?

  • Hazan and Shaver (1987) analysed 620 replies to a quiz assessing different types of love
  • 56% of respondents that were securely attached were most likely to have good, long-lasting romantic experiences
  • 25% of avoidant respondents tended to reveal jealousy and fear of intimacy
  • Suggest that patterns of attachment behaviour are reflected in romantic behaviour
• How does attachment affect parental relationships with children in adulthood?

  • Bailey et al. (2007) assessed 99 mothers and their 1 year old babies
  • Measured mother's attachment to their babies and to their own primary attachment figures using Strange Situation
  • Majority of women had the same attachment classification with their own babies as they did with their mothers
• What is one strength of research into attachment and later relationships?

  • Research support: Fearon and Roisman (2017) reviewed evidence and concluded thar early attachment consistently predicts later attachment, emotional wellbeing, and attachment to own children
  • The strength of the relationship between early attachment type and later development depends on the type of attachment, like his disorganised attachment is strongly associated with later disorder
  • Means secure attachment as a baby appears to convey advantages for future development while disorganised attachment appears to disadvantage children - supporting theories
• What is one limitation of research into attachment and later relationships?

  • Retrospective data: most research linking early attachment and later development isn't longitudinal meaning researchers usually ask adolescent/adult ppts. questions about their relationships to identify their attachment types
  • This data is reliant on honesty and accurate perception of participants and means it is hard to know whether it is early attachment that is being assessed or adult attachment
  • Measures of early attachment used in most studies may be confounded by other factors making them meaningless
• What is another limitation of research into attachment and later relationships?

  • Determinist: theory suggests that insecurely-attached children are doomed to struggle with later relationships, implying a lack of free will and self-fulfilling prophecies may occur
  • Other research suggests that insecurely-attached children can go on to experience happy and fulfilling relationships - and that attachment types are not the only factor that affect relationships (biological, innate personality factors)
  • Suggests attachment isn't as strongly linked to relationship development as thought
• What is another limitation of research into attachment and later relationships?

  • Mixed evidence for continuity of attachment type: some studies do appear to support continuity and provide evidence to support internal working models
  • Zimmerman (2000) assessed infant attachment type and adolescent attachment to parents and found little correlation between quality of infant and adolescent attachment
  • This means the outcome is not what would be expected if the internal working models were important in development, challenging the central predictions of the IWM's theory