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Attachment Theory: How Early Attachments Shape Behavior

Attachment Theory: How Early Attachments Shape Behavior
Attachment theory is focused on the relationships and bonds between people, particularly long-term relationships including those between a parent and child and between romantic partners. What is Attachment? Attachment is an emotional bond to another person. Psychologist John Bowlby was the first attachment theorist, describing attachment as a "lasting psychological connectedness between human beings." Bowlby believed that the earliest bonds formed by children with their caregivers have a tremendous impact that continues throughout life. The central theme of attachment theory is that primary caregivers who are available and responsive to an infant's needs allow the child to develop a sense of security. Ainsworth's "Strange Situation" In her 1970's research, psychologist Mary Ainsworth expanded greatly upon Bowlby's original work. Why Attachment Matters Researchers have found that attachment patterns established early in life can lead to a number of outcomes. Patterns of Attachment References

John Bowlby | Maternal Deprivation Theory by Saul McLeod published 2007 John Bowlby (1907 - 1990) was a psychoanalyst (like Freud) and believed that mental health and behavioral problems could be attributed to early childhood. Bowlby’s evolutionary theory of attachment suggests that children come into the world biologically pre-programmed to form attachments with others, because this will help them to survive. Bowlby was very much influenced by ethological theory in general, but especially by Lorenz’s (1935) study of imprinting. Bowlby believed that attachment behaviors are instinctive and will be activated by any conditions that seem to threaten the achievement of proximity, such as separation, insecurity and fear. Bowlby (1969, 1988) also postulated that the fear of strangers represents an important survival mechanism, built in by nature. These attachment behaviors initially function like fixed action patterns and all share the same function. Main Points of Bowlby’s Theory 1. 2. 3. 4. They found 3 progressive stages for distress:

Learning theory of attachment for A level psychology - Psychteacher Dollard & Miller (1950)According to Dollard & Miller (1950) attachment is a learned behaviour that is acquired through both classical and operant conditioning. Classical conditioningBefore attachment is learned, the infant gains pleasure through being fed. Food is the unconditioned stimulus and pleasure is the unconditioned response.When the infant is being fed, the infant associates the person providing the food with the food.The primary caregiver is the neutral stimulus, which becomes associated with food (the unconditioned stimulus).When the attachment has been learned, the infant gains pleasure when the primary caregiver is present.The primary caregiver is now the conditioned stimulus and pleasure is now the conditioned response.Operant conditioningWhen an infant is hungry it is in an uncomfortable state. Evaluating learning theory of attachmentLearning theory provides a very plausible and scientifically reliable explanation for attachment formation.

Secure Attachment & Bonding: Understanding the Different Ways of Bonding and Communicating With Your Child Understanding the Different Ways of Bonding and Communicating With Your Child Why is the attachment bond so important? A landmark report, published in 2000 by The Committee on Integrating the Science of Early Childhood Development, identified how crucial the attachment bond is to a child’s development. This form of communication affects the way your child develops mentally, physically, intellectually, emotionally, and socially. While attachment occurs naturally as you, the parent or caretaker, care for your baby’s needs, the quality of the attachment bond varies. A secure attachment bond ensures that your child will feel secure, understood, and be calm enough to experience optimal development of his or her nervous system. Developing a secure attachment bond between you and your child, and giving your child the best start in life, does not require you to be a perfect parent. Your baby needs more than love The bond of love differs from the attachment bond Distractions of daily life

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud (/frɔɪd/;[2] German pronunciation: [ˈziːkmʊnt ˈfʁɔʏ̯t]; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist, now known as the father of psychoanalysis. Freud qualified as a doctor of medicine at the University of Vienna in 1881,[3] and then carried out research into cerebral palsy, aphasia and microscopic neuroanatomy at the Vienna General Hospital.[4] Upon completing his habilitation in 1895, he was appointed a docent in neuropathology in the same year and became an affiliated professor (professor extraordinarius) in 1902.[5][6] Psychoanalysis remains influential within psychotherapy, within some areas of psychiatry, and across the humanities. As such, it continues to generate extensive and highly contested debate with regard to its therapeutic efficacy, its scientific status, and whether it advances or is detrimental to the feminist cause.[10] Nonetheless, Freud's work has suffused contemporary Western thought and popular culture.

Id, ego and super-ego Although the model is structural and makes reference to an apparatus, the id, ego and super-ego are purely symbolic concepts about the mind and do not correspond to actual somatic structures of the brain (such as the kind dealt with by neuroscience). The concepts themselves arose at a late stage in the development of Freud's thought: the "structural model" (which succeeded his "economic model" and "topographical model") was first discussed in his 1920 essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle and was formalized and elaborated upon three years later in his The Ego and the Id. Freud's proposal was influenced by the ambiguity of the term "unconscious" and its many conflicting uses. Id[edit] According to Freud the id is unconscious by definition: In the id, "contrary impulses exist side by side, without cancelling each other out. ... Developmentally, the id precedes the ego; i.e., the psychic apparatus begins, at birth, as an undifferentiated id, part of which then develops into a structured ego.

Locus of control In personality psychology, locus of control refers to the extent to which individuals believe that they can control events that affect them. Understanding of the concept was developed by Julian B. Rotter in 1954, and has since become an aspect of personality studies. A person's "locus" (Latin for "place" or "location") is conceptualized as either internal (the person believes they can control their life) or external (meaning they believe that their decisions and life are controlled by environmental factors which they cannot influence, or by chance or fate).[1] Individuals with a high internal locus of control believe that events in their life derive primarily from their own actions: for example, when receiving test results, people with an internal locus of control would tend to praise or blame themselves and their abilities, whereas people with an external locus of control would tend to praise or blame an external factor such as the teacher or the test.[2] History[edit] Applications[edit]

Bobo doll experiment The Bobo doll experiment was the collective name of the experiments conducted by Albert Bandura in 1961 and 1963 studying children's behavior after watching an adult model act aggressively towards a Bobo doll. There are different variations of the experiment. The most notable experiment measured the children's behaviour after seeing the model get rewarded, punished or experience no consequence for beating up the bobo doll. This experiment is the empirical demonstration of Bandura's social learning theory. It shows that people not only learn by being rewarded or punished itself (behaviorism), they can learn from watching somebody being rewarded or punished, too (observational learning). These experiments are important because they sparked many more studies on the effects of observational learning and they have practical implication, e.g. how children can be influenced watching violent media. The Bobo doll[edit] Bobo doll Experiment in 1961[edit] Method[edit] Results[edit] Criticism[edit]

Albert Bandura Albert Bandura (born December 4, 1925) is a psychologist who is the David Starr Jordan Professor Emeritus of Social Science in Psychology at Stanford University. For almost six decades, he has been responsible for contributions to many fields of psychology, including social cognitive theory, therapy and personality psychology, and was also influential in the transition between behaviorism and cognitive psychology. He is known as the originator of social learning theory and the theoretical construct of self-efficacy, and is also responsible for the influential 1961 Bobo doll experiment. A 2002 survey ranked Bandura as the fourth most-frequently cited psychologist of all time, behind B. In 1974 Bandura was elected to be the Eighty-Second President of the American Psychological Association (APA). Personal life[edit] Bandura was born in Mundare, in Alberta, a small town of roughly four hundred inhabitants, as the youngest child, and only son, in a family of six. Post-doctoral work[edit]

Psychoanalysis Psychoanalysis is a set of psychological and psychotherapeutic theories and associated techniques, originally popularized by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud and stemming partly from the clinical work of Josef Breuer and others. Since then, psychoanalysis has expanded and been revised, reformed and developed in different directions. This was initially by Freud's colleagues and students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung who went on to develop their own ideas independently from Freud. The basic tenets of psychoanalysis include the following: Under the broad umbrella of psychoanalysis there are at least 22 theoretical orientations regarding human mental development. Psychoanalysis has received criticism from a wide variety of sources. History[edit] 1890s[edit] The idea of psychoanalysis first started to receive serious attention under Sigmund Freud. Around the same time Freud attempted to develop a neuro-physiological theory of unconscious mental mechanisms, which he soon gave up.

10 Psychological Experiments That Went Horribly Wrong Psychology as we know it is a relatively young science, but since its inception it has helped us to gain a greater understanding of ourselves and our interactions with the world. Many psychological experiments have been valid and ethical, allowing researchers to make new treatments and therapies available, and giving other insights into our motivations and actions. Sadly, others have ended up backfiring horribly — ruining lives and shaming the profession. Here are ten psychological experiments that spiraled out of control. 10. Prisoners and guards In 1971, social psychologist Philip Zimbardo set out to interrogate the ways in which people conform to social roles, using a group of male college students to take part in a two-week-long experiment in which they would live as prisoners and guards in a mock prison. 9. Wendell Johnson, of the University of Iowa, who was behind the study Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, also seen top 7. 6. The Milgram Experiment underway 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.

Male and female brains wired differently, scans reveal | Science Scientists have drawn on nearly 1,000 brain scans to confirm what many had surely concluded long ago: that stark differences exist in the wiring of male and female brains. Maps of neural circuitry showed that on average women's brains were highly connected across the left and right hemispheres, in contrast to men's brains, where the connections were typically stronger between the front and back regions. Ragini Verma, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, said the greatest surprise was how much the findings supported old stereotypes, with men's brains apparently wired more for perception and co-ordinated actions, and women's for social skills and memory, making them better equipped for multitasking. "If you look at functional studies, the left of the brain is more for logical thinking, the right of the brain is for more intuitive thinking. So if there's a task that involves doing both of those things, it would seem that women are hardwired to do those better," Verma said.

Maslow Self Actualization - unlearn. "Self Actualization is the intrinsic growth of what is already in the organism, or more accurately, of what the organism is." Abraham Maslow Maslow studied healthy people, most psychologists study sick people. The characteristics listed here are the results of 20 years of study of people who had the "full use and exploitation of talents, capacities, potentialities, etc.." Self-actualization implies the attainment of the basic needs of physiological, safety/security, love/belongingness, and self-esteem. Maslow's Basic Principles: The normal personality is characterized by unity, integration, consistency, and coherence. Realistic Realistically oriented, SA persons have a more efficient perception of reality, they have comfortable relations with it. Acceptance Accept themselves, others and the natural world the way they are. Spontaneity, Simplicity, Naturalness Spontaneous in their inner life, thoughts and impulses, they are unhampered by convention. Problem Centering Peak experiences Creativity

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