Flawed evidence

• P- one limitation of this theory is the poor quality of the evidence it is based on. Bowlby’s 44 thieves study is flawed because it was bowlby himself who carried out both the family interviews and the assessment for affectionless psychopathy
• E- other sources of evidence were equally flawed, for example Bowlby said we influenced by the findings of Goldfarb (1943) research on deprived children in poor quality orphanages during the Second World War. The orphans We’re traumatised due to the poor provisions they received. This study has problems with confounding variables because the children in Goldfarbs study had experienced early trauma as well as prolonged separation from primary caregivers
• L- this means that Bowlby’s original sources of evidence for maternal deprivation had serious flaws and would not be taken seriously as evidence nowadays