Bowlby: Attachment and the internal working model

Background on Bowlby• Bowlby was born to an upper middle class family in

England in 1907. At that time, giving a lot of maternal affection was seen as spoiling a child.

• Children from the socio-economic elite were raised by nannies and sent to boarding school.

A number of wartime activities were seen by Bowlby as having significant effects in the later development of young children and he subsequently became interested in attachment:

• The rescue of Jewish children from Nazi Germany

• The evacuation of children from London

• The use of group nurseries to allow mothers of young children to contribute to the war effort

Background on Ainsworth• Mary Ainsworth worked with John Bowlby at the

Tavistock Institute in London (a centre for psychological research) before moving to Uganda, where she carried out small scale observational studies of mothers and their babies.

• She carried out a longitudinal study using home visits, with naturalistic observations (in the family living room) of mother-child interactions in the strange situation, and interviews with the mothers. She used an interpreter when she interviewed the mothers.

• She classified babies into 3 attachment groups, based on their individual differences related to the strange situation.

• Ainsworth found that the more responsive mothers appeared to have infants who cried less and appeared more confident.

• Ainsworth (1971) replicated the Uganda study in the US and found the same distribution of attachment patterns.

• The research resulted in a classification system-the Strange Situation Classification-SSC.

Hazan and Shaver (1987)Studied parent-child relationships and romantic couplings. We will look at their study in detail but they also noted that infant/caregiver relationships and adult romantic partners share the following features:

• Both feel safe when the other is nearby and responsive.

• Both engage in close, intimate, bodily contact.

• Both feel insecure when the other is inaccessible.

• Both share discoveries with one another.

• Both play with one another’s facial features and exhibit a mutual fascination and preoccupation with one another.

• Both engage in baby talk