Attachment Bonds

Separation anxiety: distress at separation of caregiver, peaks at 13 months

Attachment: emotional tie with another person

How do attachment bonds form?

1) Freud’s Cupboard Theory

  • Relating to food
  • Actually proven to be incorrect

2) Contact-Comforting Touch

  • Harry Harlow’s attachment experiments (1970s)
      * Wire “mother” with food vs. cloth “mother” with no food
      * Attachment measured by time baby monkey spent with each
      * Spent more time with cloth mother
      * Went to cloth mother when distressed
      * Even though the wire mother had the food, the monkey still went to the cloth mother for the comforting touch → disproves Freud’s Cupboard Theory

3) Familiarity

  • Imprinting
      * Not on humans
      * Attachment bonds formed by animals based on familiarity
      * Ducks: first thing duckling sees after hatching
        * From Konrad Lorenz’s imprinting research
      * Critical period for imprinting
  • Stranger Anxiety
      * Develops around 6 months, peaks at 1 year, mostly gone by 2 years
      * Distress in the presence of a stranger

4) Parental Responsiveness

  • Mary Ainsworth’s Strange Situation Test
      * Used to study attachment differences

    Experimental design
    * Unfamiliar room → mom + baby
    * Stranger comes into room
    * Mom
    * Mom comes back + stranger leaves

    Data collected
    * Baby’s behavior before mom leaves
    * Baby’s behavior when mom comes back
    * Observation of parent responsiveness at home

  • Ainsworth’s Attachment Styles
      * Secure attachment
        * Distressed when parent leaves
        * Relieved + comforted by parent when they return
      * Insecure attachment
        * Not comforted when parent returns
        * Angry or ignore parent
      * Sensitive + responsive parents correlate with securely attached children
      * Inconsistent parents correlate with insecurely attached children

5) Temperament

  • Aspect of personality
      * Reactivity
      * Emotional intensity
  • Also plays a role in attachment style
How do parenting styles affect children?

Diana Baumrind - Parenting Styles

  • Authoritarian: high control, low warmth (obedience)
  • Authoritative: high control, high warmth (consistent rules, open for discussion and explanation)
  • Permissive: high warmth, low control (kids make rules)
  • Uninvolved: low warmth, low control