Attachment and Later Relationships

Question 1

Define the internal working model.

Answer 1

our mental representation of the world, it affects our future relationships because it carries our perception of what relationships are like

Question 2

Outline how the internal working model affects later model.

Answer 2

The quality of a baby’s first attachment is crucial because this template will powerfully affect the nature of their future relationships. A baby whose first experience is of a loving relationship with a reliable figure will assume this is how a relationship is meant to be. They will then seek out functional relationships and behave functionally. A child with bad experiences will do the opposite.

Question 3

How does attachment type predict bullying behaviour?

Answer 3

Secure children are the most likely to go on and form the best quality childhood friendships and are very unlikely to be involved in bullying. Avoidant children are the most likely to be victims and resistant children are most likely to be the bullies. This was found through a study carried out by Myron-Wilson and Smith (1998) who used a standard questionnaire to assess bullying in 196 children aged 7-11 from London.

Question 4

How does early attachment affect relationships in adulthood?

Answer 4

• Hazan and Shaver (1987) carried out a love quiz to study the association between attachment and adult relationships. They found that patterns of attachment behaviour are reflected in romantic relationships.
• McCarthy (1999) studied 40 adult women and established their attachment type. Those found as secure had the best adult friendships and romantic relationships. Resistant had problems maintaining friendships. Avoidants had troubles with intimacy in romantic relationships.
• Bailey (2007) considered the attachments of 99 mothers to their babies and to their mothers, this was assessed using the Strange Situation. The majority of women had the same attachment classification both to their babies and to their own mothers.

Question 5

Outline the strengths of the research into attachment and later relationships.

Answer 5

There is supporting evidence. Reviews of the evidence have concluded that early attachment consistently predicts later attachment, emotional well-being and attachment to own children. How strong the relationship is between early attachment type and later development depends both on the attachment type and the aspect of later develepment. This means that secure attachment as a baby appears to convey advantage for future development while disorganised attachment appears to seriously disadvantage children.

Question 6

Outline the limitations of research into attachment and later relationships.

Answer 6

• Early attachment is assessed retrospectively. Most research on the link between early attachment and later development are not longitudinal. Instead researchers usually ask adolescent or adult participants questions about their relationship with parents and identify attachment type from this. This causes 2 validity problems. 1. asking questions relies on the honesty and accurate perception of the participants. 2. it means it is very hard to know whether what is being assessed is early attachment or in fact adult attachment. This means that the measures of early attachment used in most studies may be confounded with other factors making them meaningless.
• Confounding variables. Some studies do assess attachment in infancy which means that the assessment of early attachment is valid. However even these studies may have validity problems because associations between attachment quality and later development may be affected by confounding variables. This means that we can never be entirely sure that it is early attachment and not some other fact that is influencing later development.