Influence of Early Attachment on Later Relationships

• internal working model


  A set of beliefs and expectations about how people behave in social relationships, and also guidelines for interpreting others' actions, and habitual responses to make in social settings.
• Myron-Wilson and Smith (1998)

  - Used questionnaires to assess attachment type and bullying involvement with 196 aged 7-11 London children.

  - Secure children unlikely to be involved, insecure-avoidant most likely to be victims and insecure-resistant most likely to be bullies themselves.

  
• Hazan and Shaver (1987)


  - Aim: investigate attachment in adult relationships

  - Procedure: love quiz in newspaper with questions about adult relationships and attachment history

  - Results: basically, the attachment of when you are a kid predicts what kind of love relationships when you're an adult
• McCarthy (1999)


  - Studied 40 adult women who had been assessed for their attachment type as a child.

  - Found those who had been securely attached had best adult friendships and relationships.

  - Insecure-resistant women had trouble with friendships and insecure-avoidant had trouble with intimacy in romantic relationships.
• Bailey et al (2007)


  - Demonstrates the effect that early attachment type can have on attachment with own child.

  - Majority of 99 women had same attachment type to their own mother as they did with their child - shows how attachment type is passed through the generations with the internal working model.
• Strength of attachment and later relationships

  Research support

  - Fearon and Roisman (2017) concluded early attachment predicts later attachment, emotional wellbeing and attachment to own children.

  - HOWEVER, Becker-Stoll et al (2008) followed 43 individuals form the age of one year, at age 16 their attachment style was assessed and there was no evidence of continuity.
• Limitations of attachment and later relationships

  Validity issues with retrospective studies

  - Most research isn't longitudinal.

  - Asking questions relies on honesty and accuracy.

  - Hard to know what is being assessed (is it early or adult attachment?)

  
  

  Confounding variables

  - Associations between attachment quality and later development may be affected by confounding variables.