Effect of early childhood relationships on adult relationships including IWM

Bowlby’s internal working model (IWM)

Bowlby’s internal working model suggests that our first attachment(s) provide a schema for all other relationships that we’ll form in later life.  The first acts as a template that determines our expectations and a measure against which later ones can be assessed. 

Hazan and Shaver - Love quiz procedure

The researchers asked people to volunteer to take part in the study. They analysed 620 replies. The questionnaires included questions about their current or most recent relationship, their general love experiences and their early relationships with parents in order to determine attachment type. 

Hazan and Shaver - Love quiz results

The was a strong relationship between childhood attachment type and adult attachment type.

Those with secure attachments as babies were in happy and trusting relationships and believed in long lasting love.

Whereas people with insecure avoidant attachments had a fear of intimacy and felt that they didn’t need love to be happy.

Those with insecure resistant were felt jealous and argumentative and would worry that their partners would abandon them.

Hazan and Shaver - Love quiz conclusion

Early attachments could affect later, romantic attachments.

Bailey et al aim in what they wanted to prove

It has also been found in humans that parenting style seems to be passed on to the next generation, probably as a part of the range of behaviours in the internal working model so they wanted to test this theory.

Bailey at al procedure

Bailey looked at finding out how consistent attachment quality was in three generations of families. This study looked at 99 mothers who had 1 year old babies.  They measured their infant’s attachment style using the strange situation and assessed the mothers attachment style as children using interviews.

Bailey et al findings

They found that if mothers described poor attachments to their own parents in the interviews, they were also more likely to have children who were poorly attached in the observation. This association was also found in securely attached mother’s and babies. 

Bailey et al conclusions

They concluded early attachment style of the mother is passed on to their children and then subsequently to future generations raising the possibility that attachment styles and parenting skills run in families.

Evaluation of studies that support the IWM - Hazan and Shaver, and Bailey et al (Bowlby and Harlow also support this) - STRENGTHS

• Reliability: Hazan & Shaver used a questionnaire which has high reliability. All participants were asked the same questions in the same order. This meant that the researchers could easily identify patterns and commonalities such as, linking the beliefs of their romantic relationships with their parental relationships.

• Research to support: There is a lot of research to support the idea of an Internal Working Model as stated above; Bailey (2007) Harlow, Bowlby, Hazan & Shaver. As there are a number of researchers who have found similar findings, this strengthens the credibility of the research. It also supports a deterministic view which can be useful in putting interventions in place. For example if we know that attachment style runs in generations, and there is a family who have been identified as insecurely attached. There could be some form of intervention or support put in place for that parent and child to ensure their attachment is more secure/positive. 

Evaluation of Hazan and Shaver, and Bailey et al - WEAKNESSES

• Generalisability/Individual differences: Hazan & Shaver used a self selected sampling method where participants voulenteered themselves. This is a poor way of selecting participants as the results may not be generalisable for the entire public eg. people who are shy, don’t tend to fill out personal questionnaires, therefore the findings would not fully represent them.

• Questionnaire/Interviews: People tend not to answer truthfully, particularly on issues of relationships, instead wanting to make themselves look good (social desirability)