Internal Working Model & Relationships

Internal Working Model and Later Relationships

• An infant develops a schema about how relationships work based on their experience with their primary caregiver (typically the mother).
• This schema, known as the internal working model, includes expectations about trust, affection, and love in relationships.
• The continuity hypothesis suggests that an infant's future childhood and adult relationships will follow a pattern based on their internal working model.

Hazen and Shaver's Research

• Ainsworth's attachment styles (secure, insecure-avoidant, and insecure-resistant) can be applied to later attachment.
• Infants with secure attachments are more likely to develop the social skills needed for secure adult and childhood relationships.
• Insecure infants may struggle to have effective later relationships.
• Hazen and Shaver published a love quiz in newspapers and received 620 responses, examining current relationships and recalled infant-mother relationships.
• Secure participants sought a balance between closeness and independence, avoidant participants avoided intimacy, and anxious participants struggled with autonomy.
• 56% of participants were secure, 25% were avoidant, and 19% were anxious, similar to the percentages found in the Strange Situation.
• Securely attached adults believed love was long-lasting and reported more happiness and less loneliness.
• Results support the idea of an internal working model of relationships.
• The study relied on the accurate recall of childhood attachment, which may be unreliable.

Bowlby's Maternal Deprivation Theory

• Children whose care is disrupted during the critical period may develop social, emotional, and intellectual difficulties.
• These issues can limit ability to form positive relationships in the future.

McCarthy's Research

• Assessed the attachment styles of 40 women as infants in early Strange Situation studies.
• Securely attached infants grew into women with long-lasting and secure adult relationships, including friendships and romantic relationships.
• Insecure-avoidant infants grew into adults with poor romantic relationships.
• Anxious infants had poor friendships.
• Both insecure groups were more likely to live with a deviant partner.
• Early attachment style is linked to adult attachment style.

Myron-Wilson's Study

• Assessed 196 9-year-old children.
• Examined the relationship with parents and classified children as showing bullying or victimhood behavior.
• Parenting styles low in parental warmth and high in neglect were linked to children who were assessed as bullies.
• Children assessed as victims in school had parents who focused on punishments.
• Parenting style can influence the child's relationships with other children.

Verssimo's Study

• A good early relationship with the father leads to more friends when the child gets to nursery.
• The father has a role in the socialization of children.
• Infant attachment influences childhood relationships.

Practical Applications

• Understanding the importance of an infant's first attachment can influence early years education.
• Schools can adapt teaching to help children develop more effective internal working models.
• Interventions could reduce bullying and childhood loneliness in school and help children achieve relationship stability later in life.
• Stable relationships in adulthood can reduce costs due to divorce and family breakdown (economic benefits).

Evaluations of Research

• Research relies on correlational data, making it difficult to establish cause-and-effect relationships.
• Variables such as poverty or inherited genetics may be responsible for the correlation between early and later attachments.
• Self-report methods of data collection may lead to inaccurate reporting of current and infant relationship styles due to flawed memory, demand characteristics, or social desirability bias.

Kagan's Temperament Hypothesis

• Babies are born with an inherited high or low reactive temperament.
• High-reactivity babies are often distressed and grow into adults who are anxious and inhibited.
• Low reactivity infants show little distress and grow into outgoing adults.
• Parents with high reactivity infants may struggle to raise them and show little sensitive responsiveness.
• Relationship styles last a lifetime without needing the internal working model as an explanation.

Determinism vs. Free Will

• The continuity hypothesis argues that relationships are deterministic.
• People's relationship styles are set as infants, causing them to repeat the same types of relationships repeatedly.
• This contradicts the idea that individuals have free will in their relationship choices and behavior.