The results found that the attachment type chosen was significantly related to how they felt about adult relationships. Secure people (56%) were more likely to enjoy secure relationships as an adult because they believe in lasting love and trust. They are also not afraid of closeness and have high self esteem. Insecure avoidant people (25%) were more likely to find it difficult to trust people and were doubtful about the existence of love. Insecure ambivalent people (19%) found it hard to get others as close to them as they wanted because they experience emotional extremes of jealousy and passion as well as wanting to merge with their partner. Researchers found a strong positive correlation between childhood attachment type and adulthood attachment type: secure people had relationship lasting 2 times more than insecure people.
However, there are some methodological issues with this study. As the ad was placed in a newspaper it would have been a volunteer and random sample. Alongside to this the volunteers would have mainly been of the older generation because realistically not many youngsters read the newspaper on a daily basis. Due to this the results will be representative because people of all cultures and ages wouldn’t have replied to the ad. Furthermore, they used self report methods which is prone to demand characteristics and social desirability bias, as volunteers will try to represent themselves as well as possible as well as respond in a manner they believe was expected from them. Also, retrospective accounts rely on memory. Such recollections are likely to be flawed and the data obtained will be biased. Lastly, looking at ethical issues, the participants wouldn’t have been fully debriefed as they didn’t know the true nature of the study and they were self selected from newspaper readers. Therefore, the participants were not protected from psychological harm.
The results of this study were supported by a number of other studies such as by Feeny and Noller (1990) where they found that securely attached individuals had the most long term enduring romantic relationships. Aviodanlty attached people had short lived and least intense relationships.
There are other possible alternative explanations for the continuity between childhood attachment and later attachments. Some researchers have suggested that children may learn relationship skills from their parents, i.e. Social Learning Theory (SLT). Children will observe their parent’s behaviour and will then imitate it. If the father cheats on the mother and causes a divorce then the mother will be hurt, the child will see her through this pain, causing her not to trust men in relationships. This in turn means that their relationships will be shorter and therefore will become insecurely attached in their adult attachment type whereas with their main caregiver they will be securely attached.
Other studies have failed to confirm a link between early attachment experiences and later adult relationships. Zimmerman (2000) found that children attachement types didn’t predict adult attachment type. Events such as parental divorce or illness, i.e. life changing events had much more of an influence on later security. This was confirmed by Hamilton (1994) who found that children could move from being classed as secure to insecure when a major life changing event occurs. Many other studies also show that people who experienced parental divorce during childhood have more negative attitudes towards relationships than those who didn’t experience this. Silvestri (1991) found that having divorced parents significantly increases an individual’s chances of getting divorced themselves. Johnston and Thomas (1996) suggested that this could be because individuals model their adult relationship on their parents. Once again the SLT.
Moreover, Feeny and Noller (1992) found that relationship styles in adulthood may vary. There are many cases where the same person can be securely attached with one partner but insecure in a later relationship. This challenges the idea that attachment types are consistent. Therefore it indicates that there are other factors that determine the type in a relationship. This could be the resources of the partner, the quality of the relationship and the partner itself.
This research is correlation rather than experimental. Due to this we cannot claim that the relationship between early attachment and later love style is one of cause and effect. It could be cause by something different – innate temperament. Kagan (1984) proposed the temperament hypothesis from evidence that children are born with certain temperament characteristic: easy, slow to warm up or difficult. This determines the quality of the mother-infant relationship and thus the attachment type. The innate temperament affects the relationships throughout life and explains why there is continuity of style.
Lastly we need to take into consideration Freud’s Psychodynamic Approach. The model is based on his division of personality from the psyche: id, ego, and superego. He believed that problems arose directly from the dynamics of the personality. Inconsistencies of attachment types originate from conflict in childhood, due to the ego not being developed enough to deal with the id and superego. Therefore any traumatic event will be repressed into the unconscious part of the mind. However the anxiety surrounding these events doesn’t disappear, they will express themselves later on in life.
This approach could explain why some people are securely attached to their main caregiver but then will be inseculry attached when it comes to relationships. If a child at a young age is sexually abused by a person in their life, they will repress the event as it is too hard to deal this. However, once an adult and having romantic relationships, these feelings will remerge which is why they will become insecurely attached. They won’t be able to trust their partner or believe that true love exists and their relationships will be shorter than those of securely attached people.
Due to all these limitations and contradictory evidence, we can’t form a theory. There are too many ways to explain attachment types.
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