Attachments - Are a strong emotional bond

Attachments - Are a strong emotional bond

1. Theories

   • Learning Theory
     • Links Attachment to pleasure
     • Conditioning
       • Operant
         • Dollard and Miller (1950) - claimed that babies feel discomfort when they are hungry ansd so have a desire to get food and remove the discomfort. The babies desire for food is fulfilled whenever the mother is around to feed it. This is called negative reinforcement (Removing the discomfort).
       • Classical
         • This is about learning assosciations between different things in our environment. Getting food naturally gives the baby pleasure and so the babys' desire for food is fulfilled whenever its mother is around to feed it. So an assosciation is formed between the mother and food. This forms an attachment.
     • Harry Harlow - Harlow aimed to find out whether baby monkeys would prefer a source of food or a source of comfort and protection as an attachment figure. In laboratory experiments rhesus monkeys were raised in isolation. They had two surrogate mothers. One was made of wire mesh but had food, the other was made of cloth but had no food. He found the monkeys spent most of their time clinging to the cloth surrogate and only used the wire surrrogate to feed. When the monkeys grew up they showed signs of physical and emotional disturbance. The females were bad mothers and often violent towards their offspring.
   • Bowlbys' Theory