Attachment

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Harlow and Zimmerman

  • Both groups of monkeys, fed either on wire or cloth mother, showed clear preference for cloth mother and spent most of their time clinging to the cloth mother
  • Only went to 'wire mother' when it provided nourishment but would return to the cloth mother after feeding
  • 3/4 infants nursed by cloth mother and 1/4 nursed by wire mother left gauze-covered heating pad on floor of cage during first 14 days of life to spend up to 18 hours a day on the cloth mother
  • Later in life, when no longer isolated from other monkeys, some found it difficult to adjust eg. problems mating
  • During experiment the 'cloth mother' served as 'secure base' from which monkeys could explore their environment
  • When stimuli introduced the monkeys would gradually move away from the 'mother' for initial investigation, often returning to the base before exploring further
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Lorenz

  • Goslings imprint on first moving object they see; they follow this, and this behaviour has survival value, because although they can move around and feed themselves as soon as they hatch, they need their mother for warmth in the first few weeks, and they would get lost if they did not have strong drive to follow her
  • If goslings don't have opportunity to imprint on anything in first couple of days, they don't imprint at all (showing a critical period) and they grow up not able to choose a mate effectively
  • Imprint on wrong object (dangling matchbox) demonstrate sexual attaraction towards similar objects when they reach maturity
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Hazan and Shaver

  • Romantic relationships are attachment relationships and that individual differences in adult attachment style share characteristics with those found by Ainsworth et al with infants
  • 3 attachment styles are about as common in adulthood as in infancy
  • Each attachment style also found to be associated with distinct love experiences in adulthood and working models of self and relationships
  • Secure adults also found to be less loney than other 2 attachment types
  • Evidence to support concept of inner working model having life-long effect
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Van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg

  • Meta analysis
  • comparing findings of 32 studies looking at 8 different countries that used Strange Situation to measure attachment
  • In all countries, secure attachment (Type B) most common
  • With the exception of China, Japan and Israel, type C was least common
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