Describe and evaluate on theory of attachment (18)
John Bowlby (1969) presented what is arguably the most controversial yet leading theory in developmental psychology.
He argues that attachment is an innate process, naturally selected for its ability to keep animals in close proximity with their mothers, who will meet their basic survival needs, protect them from predators and teach them important life skills. He says that babies obtain inherited ‘social releasers’, such as cute faces with big eyes and small noses and behaviours such as clinginess, crying, smiling, cooing, which obtain care-giving from adults. Bowlby borrowed the idea of imprinting from ethologist, Konrad Lorenz, who showed that goslings will imprint onto the first moving thing they see and that this learning is irreversible.
Even though evolutionary accounts seem reasonable and appealing, they must be treated with caution as they are disreputably difficult to test as they are post-hoc explanations of events which have already occurred. Also, when extrapolating results from animals to humans one must be aware that, even in very similar species, very different outcomes can occur, e.g. Guiton found that imprinting could be reversed in chickens that had initially imprinted onto a rubber glove. It would also appear that humans who have had very poor early experiences of abuse and neglect can learn new behaviours when placed in loving and responsive environments, e.g. both Genie and the Koluchova twins who suffered extreme privation made great advances in their social and emotional development, although not necessarily within the normal range for their age. However, in support of Bowlby’s claims, some social and behavioral problems may be long-lasting and this was shown in Hodges and Tizard’s (1989) study where even the children adopted into happy homes still had problems at school when they were teenagers.
