Outline and evaluate Bowlby’s explanation of attachment. (16 marks)
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Course
Attachment
Institution
AQA
I finished my psychology A-level last year with an A*. I have compiled a list of improvised essays I done as mocks and each of these essays fall into band 4 (13-16 marks)
Outline and evaluate Bowlby’s
explanation of attachment. (16
marks)
Bowlby contended that infants have an intrinsic desire to build relationships with their
parents in order to maximise their chances of survival. Bowlby claims that infants have
inborn social releasers that activate a biological tendency in adults to care for them.
'Baby face' features, as well as smiling and cooing, are examples. During the vital
period between three and six months of age, babies must build attachments. Bowlby
eventually agreed that newborns could build attachments after this period (up to three
years of age), but he maintained that successful attachment formation would become
progressively difficult after this first phase. Bowlby stated that if a connection did not
form during this crucial period, the child would be socially, emotionally, intellectually, and
physically harmed for life.
Furthermore, infants acquire a unique relationship known as monotropy, which Bowlby
coined. The infant builds an internal working model, which serves as a mental template
for future relationship expectancies, as a result of monotropic attachment. If the infant
has a healthy attachment to the caregiver, he or she will create strong relationships later
in life. However, if the child has a strained relationship with their caretaker, they will
struggle in their social and romantic interactions. Bowlby's theory benefits from Hazan
and Shaver's research (1987). To evaluate the internal functioning model, they used a
self-report questionnaire called "The Love Quiz." They discovered a link between early
attachment styles and later adult relationships. This lends credence to Bowlby's concept
of an internal working model and implies that our early childhood experiences do have
an impact on our later adult relationships.
In their Minnesota parent-child study, Sroufe et al. (2005) show that the consequence of
early attachment type is carried over and projected onto expectations of subsequent
connections. Bowlby's theory implies that attachments are an inbuilt survival
mechanism, lending support to the nature approach. His concept of an internal working
model implies that adult relationships are influenced by an inbuilt mechanism shaped by
our nurturing early relationship experiences. This shows that the combination of nature
and nurture is crucial when assessing the consequences of early attachments and the
Outline and evaluate Bowlby’s explanation of attachment. (16 marks) 1
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