Bowlbys Monotropic Theory-Evaluation
- Created by: MollyL20
- Created on: 03-12-20 14:04
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- Bowlbys Monotropic theory- Evaluation
- Mixed evidence for monotropy
- Bowlby believed that babies generally formed one attachment to their PCG and this was a special attachment, only after this attachment is formed that the child can form multiple attachments
- This isn't supported by Schaffer and Emerson, they found that most babies did attach to one person at first. However, they also found that a significant minority appeared to be able to form multiple attachments at the same time
- Studies for attachment to mother and father tend to show that the attachment is more important in predicting later behaviour (Suess et al 1992)
- However, this could simply mean that attachment to the primary attachment figure is just stronger than other attachments and not necessarily that is the difference in quality
- Support for social releasers
- There is clear evidence to show that cute infant behaviours are intended to initiate social interactions and that doing so is important to the baby
- Brazelton (1975) observed mothers and babies during their interactions, reporting the interactional synchrony
- PAF were told to ignore the babies signals and to ignore their social releasers
- Initially the babies showed some distress but when the attachment figures continued to ignore the baby some responded by curling up and lying motionless
- The facts that children responded so strongly supports Bowlby's ideas about the significance of infant social behaviour in eliciting caregiving
- Support for internal working model
- It is testable because it predicts the patterns of attachment will be passed on from one generation to the next
- Bailey et al (2007) tested this idea, they assessed 99 mothers with their 1 year old babies on their quality of their attachment to their own mothers using an interview process. They also used observations to assess the attachments.
- It was found that mothers who reported poor attachments to their own parents in the interviews
- were much more likely to have children classified as poor according to the observations
- This supports the idea that an internal working model of attachment was being passed through families
- Mixed evidence for monotropy
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