Animal Studies of Attachment
Animal studies of attachment involve research on the bonding and emotional connections between animals and their caregivers. These studies often use non-human subjects, such as primates or birds, to investigate the development and nature of attachment behaviors. Through observations and experiments, researchers aim to understand the factors that contribute to the formation and maintenance of attachment relationships in animals.
8 Key excerpts on "Animal Studies of Attachment"
eBook - ePub- Willem Koops, Frank Kessel, Willem Koops, Frank Kessel(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...As Levine and Norman have put it: ‘there is a wider range of pathways to normal emotional development than has been imagined in attachment theory’ (2008, p. 139). Anthropologists have revealed the variability and diversity in conceptions of childhood and practices of childcare by studying children in context. On the basis of that work, many researchers have criticized the failure of attachment theorists to take culture seriously (Gottlieb, 2014; Keller & Bard, 2017; Lancy, 2014; Levine, 2014; Morelli et al., 2017; Otto & Keller, 2014; Quinn & Mageo, 2013; Weisner, 2014). By showing the need to study children in context, cross-cultural studies have also challenged psychologists’ reliance on laboratory experiments as the primary methodological tool for uncovering universal behaviors and emotions. In the case of attachment theory, I have argued that the alleged uniformity of attachment behaviors was not discovered in the field but constructed in the laboratory in problematic ways. Based on studies of isolated children, attachment theorists postulated the existence of universal patterns of attachment. But children do not grow up in isolation. Thus, the evidence collected in the lab always needs to be assessed in relation to the observations collected in field studies. If children’s development needs to be understood in context, so does the development of a scientific theory. Here, I have argued that the rise of attachment studies owes much to the disciplinary goals of psychological research. Riding upon the coattails of the natural sciences, psychology after WWII aimed to develop universal laws of human behavior that could be tested in the laboratory. In that context, Ainsworth’s strange situation procedure became instrumental in the growth of attachment theory, despite the numerous criticisms of its application and its interpretation...
eBook - ePubThe Science inside the Child
The story of what happens when we're growing up
- Sara Meadows(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The theory about what love does for you has developed in ways that involve contributions from many scientific disciplines – evolutionary theory, brain development, endocrinology, ethology, anthropology – and it is one of the star areas of developmental psychology. There are enormous implications for child development and parenting. At the core of the psychology of this is John Bowlby's work on attachment, which was influenced by a wide range of factors – his own personal history, his observation of deeply troubled children in a school where he taught, his training in and use of psychoanalysis, his scientific interest in evolution and animal behaviour. The place that love plays in the child's life has both biological and social bases. Babies and young children have a strong need for protection, nurturance, care, and comforting. Being able to get other people to look after your interests preserved the safety and well-being of generations of ancestors, so it's not a surprise that babies are born with an evolved capacity to relate to significant others; to seek to be close to them; to rely on them for the fulfilment of their needs for nurture, protection, and relief from distress; to feel happier and more confident when they are within reach. Behaviours such as smiling, watching, seeking to hold the gaze of the other, crying, following, clinging to, snuggling up to, and using your attachment figure as a base and reference point are all biologically programmed to develop and maintain attachment relationships, and staying near to your attachment figure should help to keep the very young out of danger. We see these behaviours in many other species. Attachment is something that is universal in normal children and in a lot of other young animals. Chicks, lambs, calves, foals, and many other animals seek to be near their mothers; they have special distress calls which attract her attention and she has special calls to summon them back to her...
eBook - ePubManagement and Organization Theory
A Jossey-Bass Reader
- Jeffrey A. Miles(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Jossey-Bass(Publisher)
...5 Attachment Theory Attachment theory examines an individual’s sense of the optimal balance between closeness to and distance from key people in his or her life (Ainsworth, 1967; Ainsworth & Bowlby, 1991; Bowlby, 1969, 1973, 1980). The theory attempts to explain the nature of the affective bonds that people make with each other (Smith, Murphy, & Coats, 1999). It assumes that early childhood experiences of attachment to caregivers have long-term effects on social relationships and the stress regulation of adults (Adshead, 2010). Attachment theory is a theory of psychosocial development that was based on animal models, such as that of Lorenz (1935), who examined how baby animals imprint on their mothers. Harlow and others (for example, Suomi, Harlow, & Domek, 1970) examined how monkeys reared in isolation from their mothers suffered severe emotional and social problems as adults, never formed an attachment (“privation”), grew up to be aggressive, and had difficulty interacting with other monkeys. An attachment is a deep and enduring emotional bond between people that persists across time and space (Ainsworth, 1969; Bowlby, 1969). Attachments can be reciprocal, but are often one-way. They involve specific behaviors, such as wanting to spend time in the proximity of the person with whom one has an attachment when one feels upset, scared, or threatened (Bowlby, 1969). In an adult-child attachment relationship, an adult can respond to the needs of a child through being sensitive and by attending to the child’s needs. Attachment behaviors appear to be universal across all cultures. Bowlby (1969, 1973, 1980) theorized that people have thousands of early attachment experiences that influence their working mental models of the self and of other people in later life. The mental models that people form influence their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors in relationships with others in many ways...
- Edward S. Neukrug(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
...The parent–child relationship becomes a model for expectations in other relationships; the quality of attachment to the parent is thought to predict the quality of romantic and other relationships later in life. Historical Context Bowlby, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, believed that affectional bonds were essential to the survival of humans. Bowlby became interested in child development and how separation from care-givers affects children. His research and writings influenced psychology, education, child care, and parenting. Bowlby’s early research was influenced by the ethologist Konrad Lorenze, who studied instinctive behavior in animals and was known for studying imprinting in birds. Imprinting is a special kind of learning where young birds become socially bonded to the first moving object they see. Although human babies do not imprint, Bowlby believed that they form a lasting psychological connectedness (attachment) with early caregivers, usually mothers. Bowlby originally focused on maternal presence or deprivation and saw the father’s role as ambiguous. Later, he recognized that fathers are imperative as attachment figures. In particular, fathers seem to be important for enhancing the exploration part of a secure attachment. A father’s support of exploratory behaviors contributes to the child’s sense of safety during difficult tasks and increases the chance for the child to focus, follow his or her curiosity, and master new talents in an emotionally unhindered way. Ainsworth, a psychologist, expanded the influence of attachment theory by studying the quality of and individual differences in attachments. She studied differences in attachment patterns (styles) using an assessment technique called the Strange Situation Classification...
eBook - ePubThe Nature of Grief
The Evolution and Psychology of Reactions to Loss
- John Archer(Author)
- 2003(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...I then examine the evidence that grief is a universal human reaction, and whether there are similar processes in other animals. This leads to a biologically based theory of the grief process which originated from research on animals. Finally, I examine the puzzling issue of the evolutionary origin of grief, which was introduced in Chapter 1. Attachment theory Two of the most influential theorists on the subject of grief, John Bowlby and Colin Murray Parkes (see Chapter 1), were both strongly influenced by evolutionary biology as well as being rooted in psychoanalytic theory (Bowlby, 1960a, 1961; Parkes, 1972, 1986, 1996). Although a biological perspective is shared with other major accounts (Averill, 1968; W.Stroebe and M.S. Stroebe, 1987a), Bowlby’s approach is distinctive in that it involved a broader theory of the making and breaking of emotional bonds, known as attachment theory. Bowlby’s theory of attachment was initially applied to the emotional bond between a young child and its mother or caregiver. Central to his view of attachment is the concept of a biological system, derived from the early work of the Dutch ethologists Gerard Baerends (1941) and Niko Tinbergen (1942, 1951), elaborated by Baerends (1976). This was foreshadowed by Shand (1920), who described the ‘systems of the sentiments’ as involving greater systems such as love, which organised and directed the lesser systems (i.e. anger, joy, fear and sorrow), so as to fulfil the function of the greater system. For example, Shand said that if the object of love is present, the lesser system for joy is activated; if there is interference with this, anger results; if there is physical separation, sorrow results. The ethologists viewed each specific biological system as a functional entity that controls some instinctive form of behaviour, such as nest-building or parenting. Each one has an overall goal, for example to build a particular type of nest or to ensure the well-being of the young...
eBook - ePub- Marci Green, Marc Scholes, Marci Green, Marc Scholes(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The second is that they will meet a psychological need for security, which is vital for human development. In contrast to so many other animals, humans take a long time to develop. The more “civilized” and complicated the lives of humans become, the longer is the period of time for which they need protection through secure attachment. Bowlby recognized that for some people, as adults, important attachments included institutions or organizations to which they belonged, and he believed that often within these there were leaders or top figures that were of great importance. Bowlby had a very different background from many of his contemporaries in both medicine and psychoanalysis, because he was equally interested in ethology, which is the scientific study of animals. He was influenced by the work of other ethologists and saw how relevant their findings were to his understanding of human development. Lorenz, in his widely known study (Lorenz, 1935), showed how a newly hatched gosling followed a shoebox pulled along on a string to imitate a moving figure. The gosling’s instinctive behaviour made it follow the shoebox as if it was its mother, as being closely attached to its mother is the overriding need of the baby gosling to secure its survival. This study into the bonding patterns in geese confirmed for Bowlby the role of attachment in the protection of the young. The other ethological study that probably influenced Bowlby even more, was one undertaken by Harlow. His work with baby monkeys showed that their need for attachment to their mothers gave them a sense of security, and this need actually took priority over their need for food. Harlow created an experiment setting up two model mother monkeys. One was made of a wire frame with a bottle of milk at nipple level. The other was made of soft fur without any milk being available. The baby monkeys showed preference for the fur “mother”, and attached themselves to her as if she was real (Harlow & Zimmerman, 1959)...
eBook - ePub- Peter Fonagy(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...1 Introduction to Attachment Theory Attachment theory is almost unique among psychoanalytic theories in bridging the gap between general psychology and clinical psychodynamic theory. Many have noted the gulf that exists to this day between theories of the mind that have their roots in empirical social science (largely psychological research), and clinical theories that focus on the significance of individual experience in determining life course, including psychopathology. Paul Whittle (in press) recently described this discontinuity of theories as a fault line that runs across the entire discipline of psychology. Indeed, it is easy to discern the fault line between the tectonic plates of psychoanalysis, where giving meaning to experience is seen as the primary cause of behavior as well as the royal road to its therapeutic change, and the abutting plate of experimental psychology, with its emphasis on parsimony, insistence on reliable observation, and abhorrence of rhetoric and speculative theory-building. Yet attachment theory has a home on both sides of the fault line. How can this be? John Bowlby’s work on attachment theory started when, at the age of 21, he worked in a home for maladjusted boys. Bowlby’s clinical experience with two boys, whose relationships with their mothers were massively disrupted, made a profound impact on him. A retrospective study he carried out ten years later, examining the history of 44 juvenile thieves (Bowlby 1944), formalized his view that the disruption of the early mother–child relationship should be seen as a key precursor of mental disorder. The one factor that distinguished the thieves from the clinic children was evidence of prolonged separation from parents, particularly striking among those whom he termed “affectionless.” In the late ’40s Bowlby extended his interest in mother–infant relations by undertaking a review of research findings on the effects of institutionalization on young children (Bowlby 1951)...
eBook - ePub- John Bowlby(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Of the many difficulties met with in understanding the framework advocated, I describe only a few. One is that, instead of starting with a clinical syndrome of later years and trying to trace its origins retrospectively, I have started with a class of childhood traumata and tried to trace the sequelae prospectively. A second is that, instead of starting with the private thoughts and feelings of a patient, as expressed in free associations or play, and trying to build a theory of personality development from those data, I have started with observations of the behaviour of children in certain sorts of defined situation, including records of the feelings and thoughts they express, and have tried to build a theory of personality development from there. Other difficulties arise from my use of concepts such as control system (instead of psychic energy) and developmental pathway (instead of libidinal phase), which, although now firmly established as key concepts in all the biological sciences, are still foreign to the thinking of a great many psychologists and clinicians. Having discarded the secondary-drive, dependency theory of the child’s tie to his mother, and also the Kleinian alternative, a first task was to formulate a replacement. This led to the concept of attachment behaviour with its own dynamics distinct from the behaviour and dynamics of either feeding or sex, the two sources of human motivation for long widely regarded as the most fundamental. Strong support for this step soon came from Harlow’s finding that, in another primate species—rhesus macaques—infants show a marked preference for a soft dummy ‘mother’, despite its providing no food, to a hard one that does provide it (Harlow and Zimmermann, 1959). Attachment behaviour is any form of behaviour that results in a person attaining or maintaining proximity to some other clearly identified individual who is conceived as better able to cope with the world...
