Schaffer & Emerson and the Glasgow babies (1964)
Aim
To find the age at which attachments start and how intense these were.
Method
They studied 60 babies from a working class area of Glasgow, observing them every four weeks for the first year and then again at 18 months. They measured strength of attachment by:
Separation anxiety: how distressed the child became when separated from the main caregiver (which suggests an attachment has been formed) and
Stranger anxiety: distress shown when the child was left alone with an unfamiliar person (which suggests that the child can recognise familiar and unfamiliar people).
(Compare these to Maccoby’s defining characteristics of an attachment (page 1) and to Mary Ainsworth’s characteristics for measuring type of attachment in the strange situation).
Findings
The first specific attachment was formed by 50% of infants between 25 and 32 weeks. Intensity peaked in the first month following the onset of the first attachment. Multiple attachments began soon after the first attachment had been formed. By 18 months 31% had five or more attachments, e.g. to grandparents etc.
Conclusion: human attachments develop in three distinct stages:
|
Asocial
(0-6 weeks) Indiscriminate attachment (6weeks to 7 months) Specific attachments (7 to 11 months) |
This is short lived. Attention seeking behaviour such as crying and smiling is not directed at anyone in particular, suggesting attachments could be made with anyone.
Similar in that the child seeks attention from anyone and is happy to receive attention from anyone. Preferences are shown to familiar faces that elicit a greater response from the infant. Child is primarily attached to the main caregiver. If they are separated the child becomes distressed and the child is wary of strangers. (See later notes on the Strange situation). |
Evaluation
Since babies were observed in their own homes (a natural environment) we can assume that the study is high in ecological validity; the findings can be generalized to the real world.
However, accuracy of data collection by parents who were keeping daily diaries whilst clearly being very busy could be questioned. A diary like this is also very unreliable with demand characteristics and social desirability being major issues. Mothers are not lkely to report negative experiences in their daily write up.
Why do we form attachments?
This is best broken into short term (immediate) benefits and longer term benefits. Both, to some extent, can be explained in terms of benefits to the reproductive success of the species or individual (depending whether you favour Darwin or Dawkins; for the biologists).
Short term benefits
Most species emerge into the World unable to fend for themselves so require lots of assistance in the early stages of life. This is particularly true of the human infant that is helpless for many early years of its life.
Forming a close attachment with a caregiver therefore ensures that the offspring will be fed, protected from harm, educated in various techniques of survival and kept warm. It seems likely that the infant’s need to form an attachment is innate. It is also worth considering that it is also in the interests of the parent(s) to protect their offspring from harm. Again in evolutionary terms they, particularly the mother, have invested a lot of time and energy in producing offspring, it is in their best interests to see the fruits of their labours reach maturity and reproduce themselves. It therefore seems likely that adults also have an innate tendency to form attachments with their offspring.
Long term benefits
These are not so apparent. Bowlby (1969) proposed that early attachments provide a template or schema, or a set of expectations that allow us to build other attachments later in life. He called this template the ‘internal working model.’ Early attachments are our first feel for what constitutes an emotional bond and we use this in later life as a basis for other attachments.
It seems they also act as an anti-incest device. Incest, as well as being morally repugnant in all societies, is biologically very dodgy, leading to greatly increased risk of genetic abnormality. Any species or individual that avoids incest is therefore more likely to successfully propagate its offspring.
The ‘Westermarck effect’
This is more for general interest than inclusion in an answer. Westermarck (1891) found that children that spend a lot of time with each other in the first 6 years of life will not go on to form sexual relationships with those same people when they reach maturity. Westermarck believed that this is an anti-incest device and in normal circumstances prevents us forming sexual relationships with close relatives.
Shepper (1971) found that not one of the 3000 Israeli marriage records he studied was for couples who had been reared together, as children in a Kibbutz. This provides evidence for the Westermarck effect but also for this concept of early attachments influencing later emotional and romantic attachments.
Since babies were observed in their own homes (a natural environment) we can assume that the study is high in ecological validity; the findings can be generalized to the real world.
However, accuracy of data collection by parents who were keeping daily diaries whilst clearly being very busy could be questioned. A diary like this is also very unreliable with demand characteristics and social desirability being major issues. Mothers are not lkely to report negative experiences in their daily write up.
Why do we form attachments?
This is best broken into short term (immediate) benefits and longer term benefits. Both, to some extent, can be explained in terms of benefits to the reproductive success of the species or individual (depending whether you favour Darwin or Dawkins; for the biologists).
Short term benefits
Most species emerge into the World unable to fend for themselves so require lots of assistance in the early stages of life. This is particularly true of the human infant that is helpless for many early years of its life.
Forming a close attachment with a caregiver therefore ensures that the offspring will be fed, protected from harm, educated in various techniques of survival and kept warm. It seems likely that the infant’s need to form an attachment is innate. It is also worth considering that it is also in the interests of the parent(s) to protect their offspring from harm. Again in evolutionary terms they, particularly the mother, have invested a lot of time and energy in producing offspring, it is in their best interests to see the fruits of their labours reach maturity and reproduce themselves. It therefore seems likely that adults also have an innate tendency to form attachments with their offspring.
Long term benefits
These are not so apparent. Bowlby (1969) proposed that early attachments provide a template or schema, or a set of expectations that allow us to build other attachments later in life. He called this template the ‘internal working model.’ Early attachments are our first feel for what constitutes an emotional bond and we use this in later life as a basis for other attachments.
It seems they also act as an anti-incest device. Incest, as well as being morally repugnant in all societies, is biologically very dodgy, leading to greatly increased risk of genetic abnormality. Any species or individual that avoids incest is therefore more likely to successfully propagate its offspring.
The ‘Westermarck effect’
This is more for general interest than inclusion in an answer. Westermarck (1891) found that children that spend a lot of time with each other in the first 6 years of life will not go on to form sexual relationships with those same people when they reach maturity. Westermarck believed that this is an anti-incest device and in normal circumstances prevents us forming sexual relationships with close relatives.
Shepper (1971) found that not one of the 3000 Israeli marriage records he studied was for couples who had been reared together, as children in a Kibbutz. This provides evidence for the Westermarck effect but also for this concept of early attachments influencing later emotional and romantic attachments.
