Attachment — AQA A-Level Psychology
Test yourself on Attachment with AQA A-Level practice questions.
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Attachment explained
Imprinting is a fast, innate bond to the first moving object seen.
Read the full explanation
Lorenz (1935) split a clutch of goose eggs: half hatched with the mother, half in an incubator where he was the first thing seen. His goslings followed him and, once the groups were mixed, sorted back to him. He argued imprinting happens only within a critical period of hours and shapes adult mate choice. Harlow (1958) gave infant rhesus monkeys a wire mother that dispensed milk and a cloth mother that did not; they clung to the cloth mother around 17-18 hours a day and visited the wire one only to feed, so contact comfort, not food, builds the bond. Deprived monkeys became aggressive and neglectful parents. Evaluation: birds are not mammals, Guiton showed imprinting can be reversed, and Harlow's monkeys were lastingly harmed.
Explanations of attachment: learning theory and Bowlby’s monotropic theory. The concepts of a critical period and an internal working model.
Two rival accounts explain why babies bond. Learning theory, the 'cupboard love' view, says the bond is learned: by classical conditioning, the carer is a neutral stimulus paired with food until the carer alone produces the pleasure food did; by operant conditioning, crying brings food and comfort, and the carer is negatively reinforced when it stops. Dollard and Miller call it a secondary drive. Bowlby rejects this: attachment is innate, triggered by social releasers like crying, focused on one primary figure (monotropy), formed in a critical period of about two years, and carried on as an internal working model templating later relationships. Harlow's monkeys fed from wire and clung to cloth, which learning theory cannot explain.
Ainsworth’s ‘Strange Situation’. Types of attachment: secure, insecure-avoidant and insecure-resistant. Cultural variations in attachment, including van Ijzendoorn.
A controlled observation built to measure attachment quality. A baby and carer enter an unfamiliar playroom for eight short episodes behind a two-way mirror, with a stranger entering and the carer leaving and returning twice. Observers score five behaviours: proximity seeking, secure-base exploration, stranger anxiety, separation anxiety and, most telling, the reunion response. Ainsworth found roughly 66% secure (explores, easily comforted), 22% insecure-avoidant (little distress, ignores the carer on return) and 12% insecure-resistant (distressed, seeks then rejects comfort). Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg meta-analysed 32 studies in eight countries: secure led everywhere, avoidant peaked in Germany, resistant in Japan, and variation within countries was about 1.5 times that between them.
Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation. Effects of institutionalisation, including the English and Romanian Adoptees project.
Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation posits that continuous maternal care is essential for normal psychological development. Prolonged separation during the critical period (first 30 months) without a substitute caregiver causes irreversible intellectual (e.g., abnormally low IQ) and emotional damage, notably affectionless psychopathy. Institutionalisation refers to the effects of living in an orphanage or hospital where children lack a primary attachment figure. Rutter’s English and Romanian Adoptees (ERA) project studied orphans who experienced extreme institutionalisation. Findings revealed that children adopted after six months showed significant deficits, including disinhibited attachment (indiscriminate friendliness) and delayed intellectual development, highlighting the severe, long-term impacts of early deprivation.
The influence of early attachment on childhood and adult relationships, including the role of an internal working model.
The internal working model is the mental template a first attachment leaves behind: a set of expectations about whether other people can be trusted and whether the child is worth caring for. A securely attached child expects warmth and behaves accordingly; an avoidant child expects rejection and keeps distance; a resistant child expects inconsistency and becomes clingy or controlling. Myron-Wilson and Smith (1998) found secure children were rarely involved in bullying, avoidant children were more often victims and resistant ones bullies. Hazan and Shaver's love quiz, answered by over six hundred readers, found 56% secure, 25% avoidant and 19% resistant, with secure adults reporting longer, more trusting relationships. Bailey et al found mothers usually passed their own attachment type to their babies.
Your focus
- Describe Lorenz's split clutch procedure and his finding that imprinting occurs only within a critical period.
- Explain how Harlow's wire and cloth mothers show contact comfort rather than food builds the attachment.
- Evaluate animal studies of attachment on generalisation to humans, reversibility of imprinting and ethical cost.
Show all 17 objectives
- Explain attachment as classical conditioning, placing food, carer and pleasure in the correct order of terms.
- Outline Bowlby's monotropy, social releasers, critical period and internal working model.
- Apply both explanations to a described bond and decide which one the detail in the scenario supports.
- Evaluate learning theory using Harlow's monkeys and monotropy using Schaffer and Emerson's evidence for multiple attachments.
- Describe the Strange Situation procedure and name the five behaviours the observers score.
- Explain how the three attachment types differ at reunion, quoting Ainsworth's proportions for each.
- Apply the three types to an infant's observed behaviour, using the reunion response as the deciding indicator.
- Evaluate cultural variation using van Ijzendoorn's within-culture finding and the charge of an imposed etic.
- Explain Bowlby's theory of maternal deprivation and its proposed consequences.
- Describe the effects of institutionalisation on child development.
- Analyse the findings and implications of the English and Romanian Adoptees (ERA) project.
- Explain the internal working model as expectations built from a first attachment and state the continuity hypothesis.
- Apply attachment types to described childhood and adult relationships, using Myron-Wilson and Smith and Hazan and Shaver.
- Evaluate the continuity hypothesis, given correlational retrospective data and temperament as a rival explanation.
Attachment exam tips
Marking Points
- Imprinting defined: an innate readiness to follow and bond with the first moving object, formed in a narrow time window
- Lorenz's procedure: a clutch of goose eggs split between the natural mother and an incubator, then the hatchlings mixed to see whom they followed
- Lorenz's findings: incubator goslings followed him, separated back to him when mixed, and imprinting did not occur outside a critical period of a few hours
- Sexual imprinting as a long-term effect, illustrated by the peacock reared among tortoises
- Harlow's procedure: infant rhesus monkeys given a wire mother with a feeding bottle and a cloth mother without one
- Harlow's findings: monkeys spent 17-18 hours a day on the cloth mother and fed briefly from the wire one, showing contact comfort outweighs feeding
- Harlow's long-term findings: maternally deprived monkeys were socially and sexually abnormal and neglected their own young
- Evaluation: generalising from birds and monkeys to humans, reversibility of imprinting, and the ethics set against the practical value of the work
- Classical conditioning: food as unconditioned stimulus producing pleasure, carer as neutral stimulus paired with it, carer becoming a conditioned stimulus.
- Operant conditioning and drive reduction: crying is positively reinforced by attention, the carer negatively reinforced by the crying stopping; attachment as a secondary drive.
- Bowlby's evolutionary basis: attachment is innate because it keeps an immobile infant close to a protector.
- Social releasers and the caregiver's innate response to them.
- Monotropy: one special attachment to a primary figure, which is central to Bowlby's monotropic theory.
- Critical (or sensitive) period of roughly two years, after which forming an attachment is much harder.
- Internal working model as a template for later relationships and for the learner's own parenting.
- Evaluation: Harlow counters cupboard love; Schaffer and Emerson's findings on multiple attachments counter monotropy; Bailey et al support intergenerational continuity.
- Procedure identified as a controlled observation in a laboratory playroom, with eight episodes of about three minutes
- The five behavioural categories scored, with reunion behaviour named as the key indicator
- Secure attachment described: moderate separation and stranger anxiety, uses carer as a secure base, easily comforted on reunion
- Insecure-avoidant described: low stranger and separation anxiety, avoids contact at reunion
- Insecure-resistant described: high anxiety, resists comfort and shows conflicting approach and rejection at reunion
- Ainsworth's proportions quoted for the three types
- Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg's meta-analysis: 32 studies, eight countries, secure most common in every sample, most avoidant in Germany, most resistant in Japan
- The within-culture variation finding, and the conclusion that child-rearing practices, not nationality, drive the differences
- Evaluation: high inter-rater reliability, imposed etic and culture-bound criteria, and the disorganised type added by Main and Solomon
- Define maternal deprivation as the loss of emotional care normally provided by a primary caregiver during the critical period.
- Identify affectionless psychopathy (inability to experience guilt or strong emotion) as a key emotional consequence of maternal deprivation.
- Explain the effects of institutionalisation, specifically disinhibited attachment and physical or intellectual underdevelopment.
- Describe the findings of Rutter's ERA study, noting that recovery depends on the age of adoption (before or after six months).
- Evaluate Bowlby's theory using evidence, such as Lewis's replication of the 44 thieves study which found no link between early separation and later criminality.
- Internal working model defined as a schema of expectations about relationships built from the first attachment
- The continuity hypothesis stated: the model generalises to friendships, romantic relationships and the learner's own parenting
- Effects on childhood relationships described type by type, with bullying evidence from Myron-Wilson and Smith (1998)
- Hazan and Shaver's love quiz: method, sample and the proportions of each adult type
- Hazan and Shaver's outcomes: secure adults report trusting, longer relationships; avoidant adults fear intimacy; resistant adults report jealousy
- Intergenerational transmission evidenced by Bailey et al's mothers and infants
- Evaluation: correlational data cannot show cause, temperament is a plausible third factor, retrospective self-report threatens validity, and the claim is over-deterministic
Examiner Tips
- 💡Name the animal, the manipulation and the result for each study - vague sentences such as 'Harlow studied monkeys' earn nothing
- 💡A question on generalisability wants a reason, not a label: say what is different about a precocial bird or a rhesus monkey
- 💡For ethics, use the cost-benefit argument both ways, because a one-sided condemnation is not a developed evaluation
- 💡If the question names only one researcher, do not spend half the answer on the other
- 💡Set out conditioning as a labelled sequence; examiners credit the stimulus labels, not a general story about food.
- 💡If the question asks you to compare the two explanations, use a comparison sentence per paragraph rather than two separate descriptions.
- 💡Use Schaffer and Emerson's findings on multiple attachments as counter-evidence against Bowlby's concept of monotropy.
- 💡In an extended response, explain both theories concisely and develop evaluation through relevant evidence, comparisons and implications rather than repeating description.
- 💡Reunion behaviour is the discriminator - say what the baby does when the carer comes back for every type you name
- 💡For a scenario, match the described behaviour to a type and justify it with the specific behaviour in the stem, not with a definition
- 💡Cultural variation questions reward the imposed etic argument by name, plus one concrete example such as Takahashi's Japanese sample
- 💡Quote the proportions to one figure each; approximate numbers used accurately are credited, invented precision is not
- 💡When evaluating Bowlby's theory, explicitly distinguish between deprivation and privation to demonstrate higher-level critical thinking.
- 💡Use specific data from Rutter's ERA study, such as the critical six-month cut-off for adoption, to support points about recovery from institutionalisation.
- 💡Link the concept of affectionless psychopathy directly to Bowlby's 44 thieves study when discussing the emotional consequences of maternal deprivation.
- 💡Every study here is correlational, so 'no cause and effect' plus a named third variable is an evaluation point you can always reach for
- 💡Say how the model works, not only that it exists: expectation shapes behaviour, behaviour shapes the partner's response
- 💡In an applied question, name the childhood type in the stem and predict a specific adult behaviour from it
- 💡Balance the deterministic reading by citing evidence that later experience can revise the model
Common Mistakes
- Saying Lorenz studied ducks or that the goslings were taught to follow him, when imprinting is innate and the birds were geese
- Reporting that the wire mother was ignored altogether, when the monkeys did go to it to feed, which is the point of the study
- Treating Harlow's monkeys as proof that human attachment works the same way, with no comment on the species difference
- Offering ethics as the only evaluation point, with no balancing statement about what the research changed in practice
- Mixing up the conditioning stages, usually by calling food the conditioned stimulus or the carer the unconditioned stimulus.
- Writing that learning theory has been disproved rather than that food alone is insufficient, since association still plays a part.
- Describing monotropy as attachment to the mother only, when Bowlby means one primary figure who need not be biological.
- Confusing the internal working model with the critical period, or treating either as a mechanism that acts on its own.
- Attributing the law of continuity and law of accumulated separation to maternal deprivation theory, when they actually belong to Bowlby's monotropic theory.
- Treating the Strange Situation as an experiment and naming an independent variable, when it is a controlled observation
- Describing insecure-resistant as avoidant and the reverse; the resistant baby wants contact and then fights it
- Reporting cultural variations as differences between countries when the study's own finding is that variation within a country is larger
- Writing that Japanese infants are insecure, rather than that a procedure built on Western child-rearing misclassifies them
- Listing percentages with no comment on what they show, which scores knowledge but no evaluation
- Confusing maternal deprivation with privation; deprivation is the loss of an existing attachment, whereas privation is the failure to form any attachment at all.
- Stating that Rutter's ERA study investigated maternal deprivation; Rutter actually studied institutionalisation, which involves privation rather than deprivation.
- Claiming that all institutionalised children suffer permanent damage; correction: Rutter found that children adopted before six months often caught up developmentally with their British counterparts.
- Describing the internal working model as a memory of the parent rather than as expectations that guide behaviour
- Stating that an insecure baby will have failed adult relationships, when the association is a tendency and many people change
- Quoting the love quiz without noting that it was a self-selecting volunteer sample of newspaper readers reporting on the past
- Leaving out the temperament explanation, which is the standard alternative account of the same correlations