Explanations lf Attachment: Bowlby's Theory

Question 1

Bowlby’s monotropic theory

Answer 1

Bowlby rejected learning theory as an explanation for attachment because, as he said, ‘were it true, and infant of a year or two should take readily to whomever feeds him and this is clearly not the case’ (1988). Instead Bowlby looked at the work of Lorenz and Harlow for ideas and proposed an evolutionary explanation: that attachment was an innate system that gave a survival advantage. Imprinting and attachment evolved because they ensure that young animals stay close to their caregivers and this protects them from hazards. Millions of years ago this might have been wild animals, today it is traffic and electricity. The different parts of his monotropic theory are:

Question 2

Monotropy

Answer 2

Bowlby’s theory (1958, 1969) is described as monotropic because he placed great emphasis on a child’s attachment to one particular caregiver, and he believed that the child’s attachment to this one caregiver is different and more important than others. Bowlby called this person the ‘mother’ but was clear that it need not be the biological mother. Bowlby believed that the more time a baby spent with the mother-figure - or primary attachment figure as we usually call them now - the better. He put forward 2 principles to clarify this:
~ The law of continuity stated that the more constant and predictable a child’s care, the better the quality of their attachment.
~ The law of accumulated separation stated that the effects of every separation from the mother add up ‘and the safest doses therefore a zero dose’.

Question 3

Social releases and the critical period

Answer 3

Bowlby suggested that babies are born with a set of innate ‘cute’ behaviours like smiling, cooing and gripping that encourage attention from adults. He called the social releasers because their purpose is to activate the adult attachment system, i.e. make an adult feel love towards the baby. Bowlby recognised that attachment was a reciprocal process. Both mother and baby have an innate predisposition to become attached and social releasers trigger that response and caregivers.
The interplay between infant and adult attachment systems gradually builds the relationship between infant and caregiver beginning in the early weeks of life. Bowlby proposed that there is a critical period around two years when the infant attachment system is activated. In fact Bowlby viewed this as more of a sensitive period. A child is maximally sensitive at the age of two but, if an attachment is not formed in this time, a child will find it much harder to form one later.

Question 4

Internal working model

Answer 4

Bowlby proposed that a child forms of mental representation of their relationship with their primary caregiver. This is called an internal working model because it serves as a model for what relationships are like. Therefore it has a powerful effect on the nature of the child’s future relationships. A child whose first experience is of a loving relationship with a reliable caregiver will tend to form an expectation that all relationships are as loving and reliable, and they will bring these qualities to future relationships. However, a child whose first relationship involves poor treatment will tend to form further poor relationships in which they expect such treatment from others and treat others in that way.
Most importantly the internal working model affects the child’s later ability to be a parent themselves. People tend to base their parenting behaviour on their own experiences of being parented. This explains why children from functional families tend to have similar families themselves.

Question 5

Evaluation of Bowlby’s monotropic theory (mixed evidence for monotropy, support for social releasers, support for internal working models)

Answer 5

• Bowlby believed that babies generally formed one attachment to their primary caregiver, and that this attachment was special, in someway different from the later attachments. Only after this attachment was established could a child for multiple attachments. This is not supported by Schaffer & Emerson (1964). They found most babies did attach to one person first. However, they also found that a significant minority appeared able to form multiple attachments at the same time.
  It is also unclear whether there is something unique about the first attachment. Studies of attachment to mother and father tend to show that attachment to the mother is more important in predicting later behaviour (e.g. Suess et al. 1992). However, this could simply mean that attachment to the primary attachment figure is just stronger than other attachments, not necessarily that it is different in quality. The jury is still out on monotropy.

+ There is clear evidence to show that cute infant behaviours are intended to initiate social interaction and that doing so is important to the baby. Brazleton et al.(1975) observed mothers and babies during their interactions, reporting the existence of interactional synchrony. They then extended the study from an observation to an experiment. Primary attachment figures were instructed to ignore their babies’ signals - in Bowlby’s times to ignore their social releasers. The babies initially showed some distress but, when the attachment figures continued to ignore the baby, some responded by curling up and lying motionless.
The fact that the children responded so strongly supports Bowlby’s ideas about the significance of infant social behaviour in eliciting caregiving.

+ The idea of internal working models is testable because it predicts the patterns of attachment will be passed on from one generation to the next. Bailey et al. (2007) tested this idea. They assessed 99 mothers with one-year-old babies on the quality of their attachment to their own mothers using a standard interview procedure. The researchers also assessed the attachment of the babies to the mothers by observation. It was found that the mothers who reported poor attachment to their own parents in the interviews were much more likely to have children classified as poor according to the observations.
This supports the idea that, as Bowlby said, an internal working model of attachment was being passed through the families.