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