Influence of early attachment on later relationships

Attachment and later relationships

Internal working model

• Bowlby suggested that a child having their first relationship with their primary attachment figure forms a mental representation of this relationship
• This internal working model acts as a template for future relationships
• A child whose first experience is of a loving relationship with a reliable caregiver will tend to assume that this is how relationships are meant to be
• They will then seek out functional relationships and behave functionally within them 
• A child with bad experiences of their first attachment will bring these bad experiences to bear on later relationships
• This may mean they struggle to form relationships in the first place or they may not behave appropriately when they have them

Relationships in later childhood

• Attachment type is associated with the quality of peer relationships in childhood
• Securely attached infants tend to go on to form the best quality childhood friendships 
• Insecurely attached infants later have friendship difficulties
• Rowan Myron-Wilson and Peter Smith assessed attachment type and bullying involvement using standard questionnaires in 196 children 7-11 from London
• Secure children were very unlikely to be involved in bullying 
• Insecure-avoidant most likely to be victims
• Insecure-resistant most likely to be bullies

Relationships in adulthood with romantic partners

• In a study of attachment and romantic and friend relationships, McCarthy studied 40 adult women who had been assessed when they were infants to establish their early attachment types
• Those assessed as securely attached infants had the best adult relationships and friendships
• Adults classed as insecure-resistant as infants had particular problems maintaining friendships
• Insecure avoidant struggled with intimacy in romantic relationships
• Cindy Hazan and Philip Shaver conducted a classic study of the association between attachment and adult…