influence of early attatchment + internal working model

• whos idea was the internal working model


  bowlby
• bullying behaviour

  attatchment type is associated with the quality of friendships in childhood (securely attatched type b = better relationships)

  study researched bullying involvement in 196 children 7-11 years old in a questionnaire:

  • secure (b) = unlikely involved
  • insecure avoidant (a) = victim
  • insecure resistant (c) = bully
• method and procedure - the love quiz


  hazan and shaver analysed 620 replies to a love quiz in a usa newspaper

  1. current relationship
  2. general relationship experience (number of partners)
  3. attatchment type determined by "which of three statements best describe your feelings"
• findings - the love quiz

  56% securely attatched - have better/longer relationships

  25% insecure avoidant - jealousy/fear of intimacy

  19% insecure resistant

  =indicative of a connection between attatchment type and adult romantic relationships
• AO3 - mixed findings

  bailey = 99 mothers study found that the majority had the same attatchment type with both their babies and their own mother

  BUT

  zimmerman = 28% of insecure types did go on to have good adult relationships
• AO3 - evidence against (correlational data)


  study found that the correlation between childhood attatchments and later relationships was as low as 0.1

  and there are other possible explanations such as temperament
• AO3 - self-reports, sample, memory

  -people could lie on a self-report due to social desirability factors or demand characteristics

  -sample = 2 times more females and all americans

  -memory of childhood could be distorted
• AO3- deterministic


  has a pessimistic forecast about people's future (unhappy childhood means they're doomed to an unhappy life)

  -ignores possible redeeming factors

  :) however, helps to understand why people use parasocial relationships to fill the void