Early attachment on relationships

• What is Bowlbys internal working model theory?

  the attachment a child has with its primary caregiver provides the infant with a schema and template for future relationships.
• What is the continuity hypothesis?

  All future relationships will follow the internal working model, impacting childhood relationships, adult relationships and even their relationships with their own children.
• What behaviour will securely attached children exhibit in future relationships?


  When a child has a secure loving relationship with their primary caregiver, they will assume all relationships should be like that and will seek out functional relationships and be functional within these relationships.
• What behaviour will insecure avoidantly attached children exhibit in future relationships?

  Emotionally Closed and/or uninvolved in their relationships, making it difficult to form secure attachments
• What behaviour will insecure resistantly attached children exhibit in future relationships?

  Controlling and argumentative in their relationships, making it difficult to form secure attachments
• What study researched the effects of early attachments on later relationships?

  Hazan and shavers 1987 love quiz in which they received 728 participants who had responded to a newspaper article with results from a quiz examining their current feelings in a romantic relationship and their feelings about their relationships with there parents. They found that those who had a secure relationship with there parents reported longer lasting and more loving relationships with current partners, and those who had insecure attachments with parents reported more loneliness.
• What study researched the effect of early attachments on school life?

  Myron-smith and Wilson 1998 studied 198 children aged 7-11 from London through a questionnaire. They found that insecure avoidant children tended to get bullied and insecure resistant tend to be bullies.
• What are the strengths of research into early attachments on later relationships?

  The supporting evidence from McCarthy in 1999 who studied 40 women who had taken part in the strange situation assessment found that those classed as securely attached had the most secure relationships and friendships, and those classed as insecurely attached struggled to maintain these relationships.
• What are the weaknesses of research into early attachments on later relationships?

  Hazan and shavers research is overly deterministic suggesting that very early experiences have a fixed effect on later adult relationships.This is not always the case some adults have loving relationships despite not being securely attached. Furthermore asking participants to recall past attachments may lack validity as they can suffer from distortion or miss remembering of past experiences.