Explanations of Attachment
Learning Theory - Classical Conditioning
- Learning through association.
- Before Conditioning: Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS) produces an Unconditioned Response (UCR).
- After Conditioning: Conditioned Stimulus (CS) produces a Conditioned Response (CR).
Same principles can be used to explain attachment:
- Food (UCS) naturally produces a sense of pleasure (UCR) - reduces discomfort.
- The person who feeds the infant (CS) becomes associated with the food.
- The feeder is eventually produces the pleasure associated with the food; pleasure now becomes a conditioned response (CR).
- The association between the individual and sense of pleasure is the attachment bond.
- Learning occurs when we are rewarded for doing something - anything such as money or praise.
- When you do something that results in pleasant consequences, the behaviour is reinforced and becomes more likely that you will repeat that behaviour.
- If you do something that results in an unpleasant consequence, it becomes less likely that you will repeat that behaviour - punishment.
Dollard and Miller (1950)
- Offered an explanation for attachment based on operant conditioning.
- Suggested that a hungry infant feels discomfort and this creates a drive to reduce it.
- When the infant is fed, the drive is reduced and feelings of pleasure are produced.
- Food becomes the primary reinforcer because it reinforces the behaviour in order to avoid the discomfort.
- The person who supplies the food is associated with avoiding the discomfort and becomes the secondary reinforcer.
- Attachment occurs because the child seeks the person who can supply the reward.
- We do learn through reinforcement and punishment however food may not be the main reinforcer - it may be that attention and responsiveness from the caregiver are more important rewards that create the attachment.
- Validity: learning theory is based largely on studies with non-human animals therefore results aren't generalisable.
- Human behaviour is more influenced by higher order thinking and emotions.
- Reductionist: behaviourist explanations present an over-simplified version of human behiour.
- Behaviourists believe that humans are no different from other animals - human behaviour patterns are constructed from the same basic building blocks of stimulus and response.
- Therefore it is possible to generalise from animal experiments.
- conducted research using rhesus monkeys.
- Harlow created two wirse mothers - one lactating mother with a feeding bottle attached to it and the other was wrapped in cloth but offered no food.
- According to learning theory, the monkeys should have become attached to the lactating mother who was able to reduce hunger drive.
- Harlow found that the monkeys spent most time with the cloth-covered mother and would even cling to it in frightening situations - a proximity seeking behaviour which is a characteristic of attachment.
Schaffer and Emerson (1964)
- observed 60 babies from Glasgow for a period of a year.
- They found that the infants were most attached to the person who was most responsive and interacted with them the most instead of the person who fed them.
- These studies show that reward and…