Influence of early attachment on childhood and adult relationships

Question 1

Influence of early attachment (Internal working model and the continuity hypothesis)

Answer 1

-Bowlby suggested that the strong monotropic attachment between an infant and mother forms a blueprint for future relationships, including our trust in people and our view of how a loving relationship should look like
The continuity hypothesis suggests that an infant’s future childhood and adult relationships follow a pattern based on the internal working model; this can include friendships, romantic relationships and parenting relationships with their children

Question 2

Hazan and Shaver, Ainsworth’s attachment styles can be applied to future relationships

Answer 2

Hazen and Shaver suggested that Ainsworth’s mother-infant attachment styles e.g insecure avoidant, secure and insecure resistant can be applied to infant’s future childhood and adult relationships
-If a child is securely attached in infancy, they will have the social skills necessary for forming secure relationships in childhood and adulthood
-This also means that insecurely attached infants will struggle to have meaningful future relationships due to a disrupted internal working model

Question 3

Maternal Deprivation’s influence on early attachment

Answer 3

-Bowlby argues that if an attachment does not form between an infant and their mother during the critical period, then the infant will suffer from severe social, intellectual and emotional consequences, adversely affecting the quality of future relationships

Question 4

Hazan and Shaver (1987) “Love Quiz”

Answer 4

Hazan and Shaver (1987) published a “love quiz” in the newspaper and recieved 620 responses
-The quiz included questions on the participant;s current relationship, which allowed them to be categoried into “adult attachment styles”
-Secure; those who looked for a balance between closeness and independence in their relaitonship, avoidant; those who avoided intimacy, and anxious; those who found it difficult to cope with independence
-Childhood attachment styles were assessed too and a significant correlation was found between child and adult attachment styles
-Securely attached adults reported more happiness in their relationship and tended not to get divorced, whereas insecurely attached adults often reported loneliness, these results suggest a link between early attachment and adult relationships

Question 5

Positive research evaluation supporting early influence on attachment Mccarthy (1999)

Answer 5

-Mccarthy (1999) Studied 40 adult women who had been assessed for their attachment style using the strange situation as an infant
-It was found that securely attached infants formed long-lasting and secure adult romantic relationships and friendships, whereas those who were insecure avoidant had poor adult romantic relationships and insecure resistant infants had poor adult friendships
-These results suggest that early attachment styles influences the quality of adult relationships

Question 6

Negative evaluation of research into the influence of early attachment in adult relationships

Answer 6

-Much of the research into the effect of early attachment on adult relationships is criticised for being correlational
-This means that a cause-and-effect relationships cannot be established between early childhood attachment types and adult attachment styles, as there may be other factors affecting adult attachment styles

Question 7

Negative evaluation of the continuity hypothesis as deterministic

Answer 7

-The continuity hypothesis is criticised as being deterministic, as it suggests that those with a certain attachment type in infancy are doomed to have poor relationships in childhood and adulthood
-People like to think that they have conscious control over their relationships, and that their future relationships are not set in infancy as the result of the development of an internal working model