Early Attachment and Later Relationships (AQA A Level Psychology): Revision Note

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 find it difficult to form healthy and functional relationships

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

• Hazan & Shaver (1987) studied the association between early attachment and adult relationships

• Procedure

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

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

  • The quiz had three components:

    • Attachment styles from the participants’ childhood

    • Adult attachment types

    • Participants’ attitudes towards 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 (10 years on average), with acceptance and trust

    • Insecure avoidant people experienced jealousy, fear of intimacy and had shorter relationships (6 years on average) with a reluctance to commit

    • Insecure resistant people experienced extreme highs and lows and had shorter relationships (5 years on average) with a fear of abandonment

  • The results supported the concept that the internal working model has a lifelong effect on attachment and relationships

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 and adolescence as they are confident in their social skills

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

• Research has also established a link between bullying and attachment

• Wilson & Smith (1998) assessed attachment type and bullying involvement using questionnaires with 196 children from London aged from 7 to 11

  • Securely attached children were 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

• This shows that attachment type is associated with the quality of peer relationships in childhood

• The Minnesota child-parent study, a longitudinal study, found that securely attached children highly socially competent later in childhood, were less isolated and more popular

  • This is because of their positive internal working model, as they expect others to be friendly and trusting, which enables relationships to form easily

Influence of early attachment on adult relationships

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

Romantic & peer relationships

• The findings of Hazan & 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 (Quinton et al., 1984)

• Bailey et al. (2007) assessed 99 women on the quality of their attachment to their mothers

• The quality of the women's attachment with their own babies was also observed

  • Findings showed that women who reported poor attachments with their own parents were likely to have poor attachment with their own children too, showing how the internal working model passes through families

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