Comprehensive summary of the psychology of attachment (ENG)
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Course
Opvoeding en Onderwijs in de 21e eeuw (P_BSAOPON)
Institution
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU)
Book
The Psychology of Everything-The Psychology of Attachment
Samenvattingen van het boek the psychology of attachment van Duschinsky, R., Forslund T., and Granqvist, P. ISBN: 9780367896560. Introduction, chapter 1 t/m 5, parts of 6 (romantic attachment and adult attachment styles) and 7 (Attachment-based interventions)
The psychology of attachment (2023) Duschinsky, R., Forslund T., and Granqvist, P.
ISBN: 9780367896560 introduction, chapter 1 t/m 5, parts of 6 and 7
Introduction
Ideas about attachment underscore the importance of the close relationships where we can seek
support in times of need. It is one of the cornerstones of how we understand the development of
family and social relationships. Attachment theory and research address some of the most
fundamental aspects of human life, including family life, child development, intimate relationships
and the many feelings such relationships evoke. The theory of attachment was first introduced by
John Bowlby, over 50 years ago. Recent studies often have surprising findings that qualify or open up
the classic theory in new ways.
The language of attachment theory and research often uses familiar terms but gives them a technical
meaning, this can make it difficult for practitioners and researchers to communicate and understand
one another. We aim to present an account of attachment theory and research grounded in
converging lines of evidence. Additionally, we aim to help make this evidence understandable, and
support different communities to communicate with one another about what the findings mean to
them.
Reporting effect size
A distinctive aspect of this book is how we treat research findings. We want to help the reader draw
their own conclusions about the relative strength of the processes under discussion, and to avoid
spurious overestimates and underestimates of the importance of caregiving and attachment for
development. In particular: how strongly aspects of a child’s early experience affect the quality of his
or her attachment relationships, or how strongly the quality of attachment relationships affects later
relationships and adjustment.
Effect sizes express the extent to which one variable explains variation in another. The most widely
used effect size coefficient is ‘r’, which can be either positive or negative, ranging from 0 (no
association) to 1 (perfect association). However, things like attachment are always affected by lots of
things. So reported effect sizes might be best considered as the strength of indication that there are
some important links between the phenomena of interest.
,Chapter 1 | ethological-evolutionary attachment theory
Four sources of attachment theory
1. Psychoanalysis: Bowlby was a psychoanalyst in 1930, attracted by the central focus it gave to
the importance of family relationships for psychological development. This included the
importance of family relationships for a person’s emotional stability and sense of self. In
psychoanalytic theory, the term attachment was used to refer to the strong value given by
children to their relationship with particular caregivers. This strong valuation of the
relationship seemed to occur even if the caregiver was unkind or neglectful. Bowlby had
some concerns with this theory. One was the weak relationship of psychoanalytic theory to
natural science. Models were generated by generalizing backwards about human
development from close inspection of specific adult cases of mental ill health. It was not
empirically tested. Another concern was the underestimation of the importance of a child’s
actual experiences of care in shaping their development. Psychoanalyst frequently treated
adult feelings of love and affection and adult mental health difficulties as resulting from a
return to some early stage of their development. In Bowlby’s view, how adults engaged in
relationships and their experience in mental health difficulties were both shaped by an
individual’s adaptations to their experiences over the course of their development. Like a
path, development could lead people in certain directions, but changing paths or cutting off
the path was always possible. Bowlby felt that too little attention was given to what their
ordinary experience at home was and how it shaped their expectations.
2. Learning theory: Bandura and colleagues developed a model of human development that
emphasized learning by modelling the behavior of others, and through feedback regarding
whether a behavior resulted in satisfaction or displeasure (1960). This idea agreed with
Bowlby’s attention to the importance of actual experiences. Bowlby acknowledged that
humans may be predisposed to display certain behaviors towards their caregivers, such as
approaching and reaching when alarmed. However the extent, and how, these behaviors are
used within the relationship with a caregiver would depend on social learning trough
feedback and modelling. The importance of social learning also agreed with Bowlby’s work
with adults who found themselves, even against their own intentions, at times repeat the
actions of their parents. Bowlby was critical about the social learning theory as it implies that
humans are just as likely to learn one behavior as another, given particular circumstances.
This fails to consider the role of human evolutionary history in shaping biases to learn
behaviors that may contribute to survival or reproduction. Additionally, social learning threats
attachment behavior as just a learning response, and secondary to nutrition, whereas Bowlby
saw it as primary, just as hunger.
3. Cognitive science: Bowlby drew inspiration from cognitive science in thinking about how
caregiving shapes a child’s expectations about intimacy and trust. Cognitive scientist had
argued that humans develop mental models based on experiences over time and these
models are drawn upon when responding to new circumstances in the present. Bowlby
concluded that interactions with caregivers would shape how a child comes to think about
and evaluate themselves and loved ones, leading over the course of development to
relatively stable mental models. These models could shape subsequent expectations or
predictions about social interactions, even into adulthood. Cognitive science also
characterized the way that our mental models filter new information. We may be more
receptive to information that agrees with our existing models, which can help stabilize mental
models over time. However, Bowlby felt that cognitive science had paid insufficient attention
to the role of child development in shaping adult mental models and had also paid
, insufficient attention to the defensive way that emotionally invested mental models might
differ from models about neural facts. Mental models elaborated in the course of interactions
with caregivers during the early development would be especially difficult to shift; they
would be embedded in taken-for-granted behaviors and would have shaped many aspects of
a person’s identity and social relationships. Nonetheless, he accepted the argument that
mental models could be abandoned if they repeatedly failed to help an individual plan for the
future.
4. Evolutionary biology: the most important source in Bowlby’s development of attachment
theory. Specifically, he was influenced by ethology, which focused on the study of behavioral
responses in animals and speculation about their evolutionary basis. The idea was that not
just biological structures, but also sequences of observable behavior could be the product of
evolution through natural selection.
Evolution and ethology
Bowlby and Hinde collaborated in developing an account of the following response in the infants of
different species. They concluded that the following response likely evolved because it helped keep
the child close to their caregivers, who could protect the child from dangers. They anticipated the
following response would be activated in infants by feeling of alarm, like unwanted, unanticipated or
extensive separation from the caregiver, which would represent a threat. It could also be activated by
perceptions of immediate threat, which could be learned by experience. However, some things, like
being cold, being in the dark or loud noises, would have been primed by our evolutionary history to
be experienced alarming.
Harlow and Zimmermann used the phrase ‘haven of safety’ to refer to the way that an infant’s alarm
and motivation to seek their caregiver would be terminated once they were achieved proximity with
the caregiver. Familiar caregivers are therefor doubly important. Firstly, unwanted, unanticipated, or
extensive separations from familiar caregivers are a source of alar, prompting efforts to gain closeness
with the caregiver. Secondly, the perceived availability off familiar caregivers is a source of
reassurance, reducing feelings of alarm and relacing the disposition to gain closeness. Bowlby and
Hinde agreed with this idea. In 1970, they qualified that the perceived availability of the caregiver
depend on both the caregiver’s accessibility and the responsiveness of the caregiver’s behavior.
Hinde argued against regarding the following response as an instinct. He conceptualized is as a
behavioral system: a disposition, primed by evolution, to respond to the environment in such a way
as to achieve a particular goal, drawing in part on learnt experience and in part on certain behaviors
disposed by evolution of species. Other behavioral systems included the disposition to explore new
environments; the disposition to flee from things that cause alarm; the disposition to affiliate with
others; the disposition to display aggression when frustrated, and the disposition to provide care to
offspring. These behavioral systems would be shaped by experience over time to be activated and
terminated.
Bowlby termed the infant’s differential following of particular adults and not others ‘monotropy’.
Monotropy was intended to mean a relationship to a particular person or place or thing that is
personally significant, based on a felt sense of need, and not superficial or interchangeable with other
people, places or things even if they are somewhat similar.
Hinde and Bowlby were intrigued by the idea that a single entity could trigger multiple behavioral
systems. A study on chaffinches showed that when conflicting behavioral systems, such as
approaching and avoiding, coexisted, the birds displayed behaviors that revealed this inner conflict.
These conflict behaviors included alternation of one kind of behavior, then the other; contradictory
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