Influences on Infant Attachment Security

• According to attachment theory, the major influence is parental behavior (especially sensitivity)

– Sensitivity: Consistent, prompt, and appropriate responses to infant signals

• Infants develop expectations about how caregivers are likely to respond to their signals

• Expectations form the basis of an internal working model

– IWM: Expectations about the nature of relationships and beliefs about the self

• Expectations result from the quality of mother-infant interaction:

– Sensitive Care: Infants expect caregiver to be available and responsive

– Insensitive Care: Infants expect caregiver to be unresponsive/inconsistent or rejecting

• Infants’ behavior in the Strange Situation reflects their expectations (early IWM)

– Secure infants expect caregiver to be responsive

– Insecure infants expect caregiver to be unresponsive/inconsistent or rejecting

• Evidence for Parental Behavior as the Major Influence on Infant Attachment Security:

– Parental sensitivity is correlated with infant attachment security, but the correlation is not strong

• Disagreement about the importance of parental sensitivity in influencing attachment security

– Other factors also affect attachment security

• Temperament and Attachment Security

– Some studies find that insecure infants are higher in distress during the first year of life

• Difficult to know if this reflects temperament or parental behavior

– In general, temperament is not strongly related to attachment security

• Goodness-of-fit may be a better predictor of attachment security than either parental behavior or infant temperament alone

• Study: Mangelsdorf et al., 1990

– 9-month-old infants: Measured “proneness to distress” (temperament dimension)

– Mothers: Measured personality characteristics

• “Constraint”: High scores indicate rigidity, inflexibility

– If infants were high in proneness-to-distress and mothers were high in constraint, infants were more likely to be insecurely attached

– Other combinations did NOT increase the probability of insecure attachment:

• High constraint/low proneness-to-distress• Low constraint/low proneness-to-distress• Low constraint/high proneness to distress