Influence of early attachment on later relationships

• the quality of a child's first attachment is crucial because it provides a template that will affect the nature of their future relationships. this is due to the influence of the internal working model created by that first attachment.
• good experience of attachment= good relationship expectations

  a child whose first experience is of a loving relationship with a reliable caregiver assumes this is how all relationships are meant to be. they will then seek out functional relationships and behave functionally within them.
• bad experience of attachment= bad relationship expectations

  a child with bad experiences of their first attachment will bring these experiences to bear on later relationships. this may mean they struggle to form relationships in the first place or they do not behave appropriately in them.
• good experience of attachment= ?

  good relationship expectations
• bad experience of attachment= ?

  bad relationship expectations.
• secure infants form better friendships and are less likely to bully.
• securely attached infants tend to go on to form the best quality childhood friendships.
• securely attached infants are less likely to be involved in bullying whereas insecure-avoidant children are most likely to be victims and insecure-resistant are most likely to be bullies.
• internal working models affect parenting:

  people base their parenting style on their internal working model so attachment type tends to be passed on through generations of a family.
• what is the key study associated with the influence of early attachment on later relationships?

  hazan and shaver: romantic relationships
• procedure of Hazan and shaver: romantic relationships

  1. researchers analysed 620 replies to a 'love quiz' printed in an American local newspaper
  2. assessed three different aspects of relationships: respondents current and most important relationship, general love experiences and attachment type.
• findings & conclusions of hazan and shaver: romantic relationships

  • 56% of respondents identified as securely attached, 25% insecure-avoidant and 19% insecure-resistant.
  • their attachment types reflected in their romantic relationships.
  • secure respondents were the most likely to have good and longer-lasting romantic relationships.
  • avoidant respondents tended to be jealous and fear intimacy.
• limitation: most studies have issues with validity

  most studies of attachment do not use the stranger situation but assess infant-parent attachment using interviews or questionnaires, not in infancy but years later. the validity of questionnaires and interviews is limited as they depend on respondents being honest and having a realistic view of their own relationships. a related problem concerns the retrospective nature of assessment. looking back in adulthood at one's early attachment lacks validity as it relied on accurate recollections.
• limitation: influence of infant attachment on future relationships is exaggerated

  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 overemphasising this risk we become too pessimistic about people's futures.
• limitation: several studies indicate associations but this isn't the same as causation

  there are alternative explanations for the continuity that often exists between infant and later relationships. the child's temperament may influence both infant attachment and the quality of later relationships. this is a limitation because it is counter to bowlby's view that the internal working model caused these outcomes
• limitation: theoretical problem with research related to internal working models

  internal working models are unconscious- we are not 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 gives us indirect evidence about internal working models. this is a potential limitation of most research involving the concept of internal working model