Attachment: Bowlby And Ainsworth’s Theory Explained

Key Takeaways:

 Attachment is defined as a “lasting psychological connectedness between

human beings” (Bowlby, 1969, P. 194), and may be considered
interchangeable with concepts such as “affectional bond” and “emotional
bond.”
 A person’s first attachment is often established with the primary caregiver
during infancy. However, it must be noted that attachment is not unique to
infant-caregiver relationships but may also be present in other forms of
social relationships.
 Attachments of various kinds are formed through the repeated act of
“attachment behaviors” or “attachment transactions,” a continuing process of
seeking and maintaining a certain level of proximity to another specified
individual (Bowlby, 1969).
 Because caregivers vary in their levels of sensitivity and responsiveness, not
all infants attach to caregivers in the same way.

Understanding Attachment

What is attachment theory in relationships?

Attachment theory is a psychological theory developed by British psychologist

John Bowlby that explains how humans form emotional bonds with others,
particularly in the context of close relationships.

The theory suggests that infants and young children have an innate drive to seek
proximity to their primary caregivers for safety and security, and that the quality of
these early attachments can have long-term effects on social and emotional
development.

Attachment theory in psychology originates with the seminal work of John

Bowlby (1958). In the 1930s John Bowlby worked as a psychiatrist in a Child
Guidance Clinic in London, where he treated many emotionally disturbed children.
This experience led Bowlby to consider the importance of the child’s relationship
with their mother in terms of their social, emotional and cognitive development.
Specifically, it shaped his belief about the link between early infant separations
with the mother and later maladjustment, and led Bowlby to formulate his
attachment theory.

Bowlby (1958) proposed that attachment can be understood within an evolutionary

context in that the caregiver provides safety and security for the infant. Attachment
is adaptive as it enhances the infant’s chance of survival.

Children come into the world biologically pre-programmed to form attachments

with others, because this will help them to survive.

This is illustrated in the work of Lorenz (1935) and Harlow (1958). According to
Bowlby, infants have a universal need to seek proximity with their caregiver when
stressed or threatened (Prior & Glaser, 2006).

The Importance of Early Emotional Bonds

Attachment can be defined as a deep and enduring emotional bond between two
people in which each seeks closeness and feels more secure when in the presence
of the attachment figure.

Attachment behavior in adults toward the child includes responding sensitively and
appropriately to the child’s needs. Such behavior appears universal across
cultures.

Attachment theory explains how the parent-child relationship emerges and

influences subsequent development.

Attachments are most likely to form with those who responded accurately to the
baby’s signals, not the person they spent more time with. Schaffer and Emerson
called this sensitive responsiveness.

Attachment is characterized by specific behaviors in children, such as seeking

proximity to the attachment figure when upset or threatened (Bowlby, 1969).

Ainsworth’s Strange Situation

Mary Ainsworth and her colleagues discovered three major patterns that infants
attach to their primary caregivers (“mother figures”) from their Strange Situation
Procedure (Ainsworth et al., 1978).

The study recruited four different samples of infants at around one year of age, and
engaged them in the Strange Situation procedure, roughly described below:

An infant was put into an unfamiliar environment with his or her mother and was
free to explore the environment; a stranger entered the room and gradually
approached the infant; the mother then left the room, returning after the infant
spent some time alone with the stranger.

Ainsworth and colleagues observed how comfortable each infant was physically
farther away from the mother in an unfamiliar environment, how each infant
interacted with the stranger, and how each infant greeted the mother upon her
return.

Based on the observations, they sorted the infants into three groups: secure,
anxious, and avoidant.

Attachment Styles

Attachment styles refer to the particular way in which an individual relates to

other people. The style of attachment is formed at the very beginning of life, and
once established, it is a style that stays with you and plays out today in how you
relate in intimate relationships and in how you parent your children.

The concept involves one’s confidence in the availability of the attachment figure
for use as a secure base from which one can freely explore the world when not in
distress and a safe haven from which one can seek support, protection, and comfort
in times of distress.

Secure Attachment

Bowlby (1988) described secure attachment as the capacity to connect well and
securely in relationships with others while also having the capacity for autonomous
action as situationally appropriate.
Secure attachment is characterized by trust, an adaptive response to being
abandoned, and the belief that one is worthy of love.

An infant with a secure attachment is characterized as actively seeking and

maintaining proximity with the mother, especially during the reunion episode. The
infant may or may not be friendly with the stranger, but always showed more
interest in interacting with the mother.

Additionally, during the same situation the infant tended to be slightly distressed
during separation from the mother, but the infant rarely cried.

Ainsworth and colleagues interpreted infants who were securely attached to their
mothers, showed less anxiousness and more positive attitudes toward the
relationship, and were likely because they believe in their mothers’ responsiveness
towards their needs.

Anxious (Ambivalent) Attachment

Anxious attachment (also called ambivalent) relationships are characterized by a

concern that others will not reciprocate one’s desire for intimacy. This is caused
when an infant learns that their caregiver or parent is unreliable and does not
consistently provide responsive care towards their needs.

An anxiously attached infant is characterized as being somewhat ambivalent (and

resistant) to the mother. The infant often demonstrated signs of resisting
interactions with the mother, especially during the strange situation reunion
episode.

However, once contact with the mother was gained, the infant also showed strong
intentions to maintain such contact. Overall, ambivalent infants often seemed to
display maladaptive behaviors throughout the Strange Situation.

Ainsworth and colleagues found ambivalent infants to be anxious and unconfident

about their mothers’ responsiveness, and their mothers were observed to lack “the
fine sense of timing” in responding to the infants’ needs.

As adults, those with an anxious preoccupied attachment style are overly

concerned with the uncertainty of a relationship. They hold a negative working
model of self and a positive working model of others.
Avoidant Attachment

Children with avoidant attachment styles tend to avoid interaction with the
caregiver, and show no distress during separation. This may be because the parent
has ignored attempts to be intimate, and the child may internalize the belief that
they cannot depend on this or any other relationship.

An infant with an avoidant attachment was characterized as displaying little to no

tendency of seeking proximity with the mother.

The infant often showed no distress during separation with the mother, interacted
with the stranger similarly to how he or she would interact with the mother, and
showed slight signs of avoidance (turning away, avoiding eye contact, etc.) when
reunited with the mother.

Ainsworth and colleagues interpreted infants’ avoidance behaviors as a defensive

mechanism against the mothers’ own rejecting behaviors, such as being
uncomfortable with physical contact or being more easily angered by the infants.

Disorganized (Fearful) Attachment

Main and Solomon (1986) discovered that a sizable proportion of infants did not fit
into secure, anxious, or avoidant, based on their behaviors in the Strange Situation
experiment. They categorized these infants as having a disorganized attachment
type.

Disorganized attachment is classified by children who display sequences of

behaviors that lack readily observable goals or intentions, including obviously
contradictory behaviors or stilling/freezing of movements.

Main and Solomon found that the parents of disorganized infants often had
unresolved attachment-related traumas, which caused the parents to display either
frightened or frightening behaviors, resulting in the disorganized infants being
confused or forcing them to rely on someone they were afraid of at the same time.
Stages Of Attachment
Rudolph Schaffer and Peggy Emerson (1964) investigated if attachment develops
through a series of stages, by studying 60 babies at monthly intervals for the first
18 months of life (this is known as a longitudinal study).

The children were all studied in their own home, and a regular pattern was
identified in the development of attachment.

The babies were visited monthly for approximately one year, their interactions
with their carers were observed, and carers were interviewed.

A diary was kept by the mother to examine the evidence for the development of
attachment. Three measures were recorded:

• Stranger Anxiety – response to arrival of a stranger.

• Separation Anxiety – distress level when separated from carer, degree of comfort
needed on return.

• Social Referencing – degree that child looks at carer to check how they should
respond to something new (secure base).

They discovered that baby’s attachments develop in the following

sequence:
 Asocial (0 – 6 weeks)
Very young infants are asocial in that many kinds of stimuli, both social and non-
social, produce a favorable reaction, such as a smile.

 Indiscriminate Attachments (6 weeks to 7 months)

Infants indiscriminately enjoy human company, and most babies respond equally
to any caregiver. They get upset when an individual ceases to interact with them.

From 3 months, infants smile more at familiar faces and can be easily comfortable
by a regular caregiver.
  Specific Attachment (7 – 9 months)
Special preference for a single attachment figure. The baby looks to particular
people for security, comfort, and protection. It shows fear of strangers (stranger
fear) and unhappiness when separated from a special person (separation anxiety).

Some babies show stranger fear and separation anxiety much more frequently and
intensely than others, nevertheless, they are seen as evidence that the baby has
formed an attachment. This has usually developed by one year of age.

 Multiple Attachment (10 months and onwards)

Many of the babies from the Schaffer and Emerson study had multiple attachments
by 10 months old, including attachments to mothers, fathers, grandparents,
siblings, and neighbors.

The baby becomes increasingly independent and forms several attachments. By 18

months, the majority of infants have formed multiple attachments.

The multiple attachments formed by most infants vary in their strength and
importance to the infant. Attachments are often structured in a hierarchy, whereby
an infant may have formed three attachments but one may be stronger than the
other two, and one may be the weakest.

The results of the study indicated that attachments were most likely to form with
those who responded accurately to the baby’s signals, not the person they spent
more time with. Schaffer and Emerson called this sensitive responsiveness.

Intensely attached infants had mothers who responded quickly to their demands
and, interacted with their child. Infants who were weakly attached had mothers
who failed to interact.

The Lasting Impact Of Early Attachment

According to Bowlby’s theory (1988) when we form our primary attachment we
also make a mental representation of what a relationship is (internal working
model) which we then use for all other relationships in the future i.e. friendships,
working and romantic relationships.
The different attachment styles may be viewed essentially as different internal
working models of “relationships” that evolved out of event experiences (Main,
Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985).

Internal working model of attachment

This would suggest that early interactions with caregivers could not only shape
how an infant understood and behaved in relationships (as exemplified by infant
attachment styles), but that such impact could be carried forward into adult
attachment .

According to Bowlby (1969) later relationships are likely to be a continuation of

early attachment styles (secure and insecure) because the behavior of the infant’s
primary attachment figure promotes an internal working model of relationships
which leads the infant to expect the same in later relationships.

In other words, there will be continuity between early attachment experiences and
later relationships. This is known as the continuity hypothesis.

In humans, attachment does not conclude in infancy, or even childhood, but instead
is active throughout the lifespan, with individuals gaining comfort from both
physical and mental representations of significant others (Bowlby, 1969).

It is through an individual’s internal working model that childhood patterns of

attachment are carried forward across the life cycle into adolescent and adulthood.

The notion of security is still an important one; however, the growing emergence
of autonomy is also significant as the attachment system in adults is less likely to
be activated due to them being able to tolerate higher levels of distress compared to
children.

During adulthood, new attachment bonds are formed which may become a
significant source of support during periods of distress, or during periods of goal
achievement and exploration
Researchers have proposed that working models are interconnected within a
complex hierarchical structure (Bowlby, 1980; Bretherton, 1985, 1990; Collins &
Read, 1994; Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985).

Complex hierarchical structure of attachment relationships

For example, the highest level model comprises beliefs and expectations across all
types of relationship, and lower level models hold general rules about specific
relations, such as romantic or parental, underpinned by models specific to events
within a relationship with a single person.

The existence of multiple mental models is supported by evidence which

demonstrates considerable within-person variability in the expectations and beliefs
that people hold about the self and others (Baldwin & Fehr, 1995).

Furthermore, although specific models of attachment relationships are positively

associated with more overarching general working models, the correlations are
small to moderate (less than .40), indicating that they comprised distinct beliefs
regarding the self and significant others (Cozzarelli, Hoekstra, & Bylsma, 2000).

Likely, general mental models indicate a typical appraisal of the self and others
across relationships, and relationship-specific beliefs about the self and one’s
partner would plausibly represent only a part of these generalized beliefs.

Summarizing the four styles-What are the Four attachments in relationship?

Attachment theory suggests that there are four types of attachments people can
develop based on their early experiences with caregivers. These four types are
secure, anxious-preoccupied, avoidant-dismissive, and disorganized.

People with secure attachments are comfortable with intimacy and have positive
views of themselves and others. Those with anxious-preoccupied attachments
worry about being rejected and may become overly clingy in relationships.
People with avoidant-dismissive attachments may avoid close relationships and
prioritize independence. Those with disorganized attachments may have difficulty
regulating their emotions and behavior in close relationships due to past trauma or
abuse.

Attachment styles can change over time, but understanding one’s attachment
style can provide insight into how one approaches relationships and areas for
personal growth.