Influence of early attachment on later relationships

Adult relationships

The relationships the child goes on to have later in life as an adult. These include friendships and working relationships but most critically relationships with romantic partners and the person’s own children

Childhood relationships

Affiliations with other people in childhood, including friends and classmates, and with adults such as teachers

Internal working model

Our mental representations of the world.

Acts as a blueprint for later relationships based on early life experiences.

Someone experiencing loving relationships will expect functional relationships in the future.

Someone experiencing abusive relationships will expect abuse or may be abusive

Continuity hypothesis

Consistency between early emotional experience and attachment style in later relationships. The quality of an infant’s primary attachment has a positive correlation with the quality of later attachments.

Relationships in childhood

Attachment is associated with the quality of peer relationships in childhood.

Securely-attached babies form the best quality childhood friendships. Insecurely attached babies have friendship difficulties

Childhood relationships and attachment types

Secure - Formed high quality friendships

IA - More likely to be bullied.

IR - More likely to be bullies.

Consequences of a lack of attachment

Lack of Internal Working Model

Attachment disorder

Poor parenting in the future

Attachment disorder

Experienced neglect or a frequent change in caregivers. No preferred attachment figure and an inability to interact and relate to others.

Adult relationships

Hazan and Shaver

Procedure

Investigated how early attachment styles affect adult relationships.

The “Love Quiz” assessed someone’s attachment type.

Respondents were given statements about love and romantic relationships and chose the one that matched their attitude the closest.

Participants had to complete a questionnaire that assessed their relationship to their parents.

620 responses (205 men 415 women). Age range 14-82 years.

Hazen and Shaver

Findings

Attachment styles in adulthood were similar to attachments in infancy

56% secure

25% avoidant

19% resistant

Attachment types differences in romantic relationships

Secure - Longer lasting, no divorce. Most important relationships were happy. Supports their partner despite faults.

IA - Fear of intimacy and reported jealousy. More likely to say that love rarely lasts.

IR - Love involved obsession and jealousy. More doubtful about existence and durability of romantic love. Falling in love was easy but rarely found love.

W Questionnaires and Interviews

Social desirability may be an issue when it comes to relationships as it is a sensitive topic.

The data is retrospective e.g. being asked about your early relationship with your mother.

Hard to generalise the data.

W Sample

Self-selected sample in the Hazen and Shaver study.

Only the people who read that newspaper could take part.

This means that the study is low in population validity and the results can’t be generalised

S River

Research support

Reviewed 40 different studies.

Concluded that early attachment style consistently predicts later romantic attachments.

Secure - Predicts high levels of relationship satisfaction

IR - Associated with verbal aggression in romantic relationships.

Confirms that secure attachment in early life has advantages for future development

W Extraneous variables

Other factors may affect how a child relates to others e.g. life events such as parental divorce can have a bigger impact.

We can’t be entirely sure that it is early attachment and not other factors that influencing later development.