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Outline and evaluate Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation (16)A01: Bowlbys theory of maternal deprivation (1951) suggested that early experiences of prolonged
separation from primary caregiver results in adverse effects on psychological development. He
proposed that continuous care is needed in the ‘critical period’ in order for the child to develop
emotionally and intellectually and if separated from primary caregiver these get damaged.
A02; Bowlby did an experiment on the long term effects of prolonged maternal deprivation called
the 44 thieves study. He did it to examine the link between affectionless psychopath and maternal
deprivation. He gathered a sample of 44 teenage thieves accused of stealing. All thieves were
interviewed to see signs of affectionless psychopathology, which includes lack of guilt. Their families
were also interviewed in order to determine if the thieves experienced prolonged maternal
deprivation from mothers. A control group was also used it consisted of non criminal but
emotionally disturbed individuals to see how often maternal deprivation occurred in children who
were not criminals. He found that 14 out of the 44 teens could be described at affectionless
psychopaths. Out of the 14, 12 experienced maternal deprivation in the first 2 years of their life. In
conclusion prolonged early separation caused affectionless psychopathology.
A03: Strength of this study is that there is further research that supports maternal deprivation. For
example Goldfarb (1955) followed up 30 War orphaned children to age 12. Of the original sample
half had been fostered by the age of 4 whilst the other half remained in the orphanage. He tested
both groups IQ and found that the fostered children had a higher IQ than the children who hadn’t.
This is strength because it shows prolonged separation from a primary caregiver can adversely affect
intellectual health.
A weakness of this study is that it can be criticised for interviewer bias. As the experiment consisted
of interviewers many psychologists argues that Bowlby might have interpreted the findings in a bias
way in order to generate support for his theory. This is a weakness because it means that Bowlbys
finding have interviewer bias therefore they are not reliable and are inaccurate.
Another weakness of this study is that research from Lewis (1954) challenges Bowlbys theory in
maternal deprivation. For example Lewis replicated Bowlbys 44 thieve study using a higher sample
of 500 young people. In her sample, a history of prolonged separation from the mother didn’t
predict criminality or difficulty forming relationships. This is a problem because it suggests other
factors can lead to criminality and it isn’t necessarily maternal deprivation.
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