Early Attachment and Later Relationships (AQA AS Psychology)

Internal working model

• Bowlby explained early attachment using the internal working model, suggesting that an infant's first attachment figure provides a template for understanding future relationships e.g.

  • 'I am worthy of love'

  • 'I am unworthy of love'

  • 'I am seeking a romantic partner who will appreciate me in the way that my parent(s) appreciated me'

• An infant whose first experience of a relationship is loving and nurturing will likely form healthy attachment relationships later on in life as this is their assumption of relationships and attachment

  • They are likely to show secure attachment behaviours

• An infant who has a negative relationship with their primary attachment figure may mean they find it difficult to form healthy and functional relationships

  • They may display insecure-avoidant or insecure-resistant attachments towards peers or romantic partners

• Hazan and Shaver (1987) designed a study to investigate the internal working model

• Procedure

  • Hazan and Shaver devised a 'Love Quiz' which was printed in a small-town magazine called Rocky Mountain News

  • The questionnaire was an assessment of the internal working through questions around love and relationships and attachment experiences and history

  • The quiz had three parts:

    • Attachment styles from the participants’ childhood

    • Adult attachment types

    • Participants’ beliefs on love (their internal working model)

  • Examples of questions included:

    • Which of the following best describes your parents’ relationships with each other?

    • Which of the following best describes your relationship with your father?

    • Select the statement that best describes your attitudes towards love

  • There were 620 responses:

    • 205 from men

    • 415 from women

• Findings

  • The percentages of the resulting romantic attachment types were similar to the participant's early attachment behaviours

    • 56% were securely attached

    • 25% were insecure-avoidant

    • 19% were insecure-resistant

  • There was a positive correlation between attachment style and romantic relationship experiences

    • Securely attached people had happy, trusting experiences, and long-lasting relationships, with acceptance and trust

    • Resistant and avoidant attached people had much shorter relationships

  • The results supported the concept that the internal working model has a lifelong effect

Influence of early attachment on childhood relationships

• The relationships a child forms can be affected by early childhood experiences of attachment

  • Securely attached infants tend to form healthy and functional friendships during childhood

  • Securely attached infants become more popular and more empathetic children, meaning they have higher development of emotional/social skills

  • Research has also established a link between bullying and attachment

    • Securely attached children are unlikely to be involved in incidences of bullying, either as victims or bullies

    • Insecure-avoidant attached infants are more likely to be victims of bullying

    • Insecure-resistant attached infants are more likely to be bullies

Influence of early attachment on adult relationships

• Adult relationships and a person's mental health can be affected by attachment in childhood

Romantic and peer relationships

• The findings of Hazan and Shaver's 'Love Quiz' suggest a link between securely attached infants and adults forming secure attachments and healthy long-lasting romantic relationships

• One piece of research used a sample of adult women who had also been assessed as infants and their attachment type established

  • Adult women who were securely attached as infants had secure and long-lasting friendships and romantic partnerships

  • Those classed as insecure-resistant infants found it difficult to maintain friendships

  • Insecure-avoidant infants went on to have issues with intimacy in romantic relationships

Parenting relationships

• Harlow's experiments on rhesus monkeys showed a link between poor attachment and poor parenting

• Other researchers studied women who had been institutionalised (and therefore had a poor internal working model)

  • Findings showed poorer social functioning and parenting difficulties in the institutionalised mothers compared to a control group of non-institutionalised women

Mental health

• Mental health can also be affected by a person's internal working model

• A lack of attachment during a child's infancy and their critical period may lead to a poor internal working model

  • This can lead to a mental health condition called attachment disorder, characterised by

    • a lack of a preferred attachment figure

    • inability to interact functionally with others

    • experiences of severe neglect

    • frequent change of caregivers (e.g. in foster care)

Evaluation

Strengths

• There is supporting evidence of childhood attachment and later relationships

  • A meta-analysis on early attachment and its role in socio-emotional development concluded that early attachment patterns are predictors of later attachments and relationships

    • This suggests that securely attached infants go on to form successful relationships in adulthood

• Longitudinal studies support the idea that early attachment influences later relationships

  • A longitudinal study found that participants who were securely attached as infants went on to have higher social-emotional skills, formed closer friendships with their peers, and were able to express emotions healthily in relationships

    • This provides supporting evidence that attachment types in infants predict relationships in adult life

Limitations

• One limitation of research into the influence of early attachment is that it relies on retrospective assessment

  • Most of the studies involve assessing adult participants through questions about their early life, relationships with parents, peers and partners

  • Childhood attachment types are then identified from these findings

  • This method lowers the validity of the findings:

    • Participants may not be honest in their responses or may not have accurate memories of their childhood

    • It raises the question as to whether child attachment is being assessed or adult attachment

  • The retrospective method brings in confounding variables (such as inaccurate memories) that may lead to inaccurate conclusions

• There are confounding variables involved in the assessment of attachment types

  • Confounding variables may lower the validity of the findings, e.g.

    • attachment quality in childhood may be affected by genetic influences such as personality type

    • parenting styles may influence attachment types and also affect the quality of relationships later in life

    • infant temperament may affect the way a parent responds and so influence attachment bonds; this may also affect later relationships