Bowlby's Evolutionary Explanation of Attachment

This proposes that attachments are formed when an infant receives food - they learn to 'love' the person who feeds them. This is the 'cupboard love' idea.

Involves learning through associating a stimulus with a response. In this case, as food naturally gives pleasure, food is an unconditioned stimulus, leading to the unconditioned pleasure response. The caregiver (neutral stimulus) gives the infant food - so the caregiver becomes a conditioned stimulus. The conditioned response is the pleasure of being fed, which is now 'paired' with the caregiver.

Involves learning through rewards / punishments. By crying, infants produce a response from the caregiver of caring and comforting them, so learns that, by crying, the caregiver will care for them. From the caregiver's perspective, comforting the infant leads to the crying stopping, so this behaviour will be repeated by the caregiver (this is negative reinforcement - continuing a behaviour to avoid a negative outcome).

Biological compulsions such as the need to satisfy hunger are described as 'primary drives'. Because the caregiver reduces hunger, the attachment to them becomes the 'secondary drive' for the infant.

- Lorenz and Harlow's research weakens learning theory. Lorenz's goslings imprinted on him before he fed them, and Harlow's monkeys preferred a cloth mother (which didn't have a milk bottle) over a wire mother (which did). This suggests that food is not the primary reason for attachment.

- Schaffer and Emerson's research showed that babies did not necessarily become attached to whoever fed them the most, rather, who spent time sensitively responding to them. This weakens the assumption of learning theory.

- Learning theory only considers food as the driving force behind attachment formation and quality, not considering other factors such as sensitive responding and developing reciprocity. This makes the explanation over-simplistic.

Bowlby suggested that attachment is an innate (unlearned, instinctual) process, which is evolutionarily beneficial - those infants that did become attached would be more likely to be cared for by an adult, therefore more likely to survive and pass on this behaviour genetically.

Bowlby suggested that it is important for infants to have one primary attachment figure whom they have a close bond with. Usually this is the mother, although this is not essential. This is because it allows for continuous, consistent care (law of continuity), and that it keeps separations from the primary caregiver to a minimum (law of accumulated separation).

These are innate infant behaviours and characteristics which encourage an innate nurturing response from an adult (linking to the idea of attachment as reciprocal). Social releasers include 'cute' facial features, such as big eyes and a small nose, or crying, which is unpleasant and triggers a drive to stop it in the adult.

Bowlby proposed that an infant must form an attachment within the first two years of life - once this passes, an attachment can never be formed (at least, it will be very difficult). During this time, infants are particularly sensitive to forming attachments.

This is the concept that a child's attachment to a caregiver provides them with a 'model' of what relationships are like and how they work. Therefore, if they form a loving, sensitive attachment, then they will bring these qualities to other relationships they have in later life, with friends and romantic partners. 

The opposite is also true - if the quality of attachment is poor, then they are likely to have poor relationships with others in the future.

This also applies to their own skills as a future parent.

- The idea of monotropy is 'socially sensitive' (there are social consequences of the theory). It places a great deal of pressure on the primary attachment figure (usually the mother) to form sensitive, loving, nurturing attachments with their children, otherwise the rest of the child's life may be negatively affected. Some theorists have criticised this, especially from a feminist perspective.

+ Brazleton et al (1975) found that, in an experimental situation, when parents were instructed to ignore social releasers from their babies, the baby responded in a very negative way (lying motionless). This supports that the role of social releasers is very important in the attachment relationship.

+ Bailey et al (2007) found that mothers who reported poor attachments to their own mothers (measured by questionnaire), also had poor quality attachments to their children (measured by observation). This supports the internal working model idea.