Question

Compare and contrast John Bowlby's and Mary Ainsworth's theories of attachment. What are the similarities and what are the differences between the two?

Answer 1

Attachment is a deep and enduring emotional bond that connects one person to another across time and space. Attachment does not have to be reciprocal. One person may have an attachment to an individual which is not shared. Attachment is characterized by specific behaviors in children, such as seeking proximity to the attachment figure when upset or threatened attachment behavior in adults towards the child includes responding sensitively and appropriately to the child’s needs. Such behavior appears universal across cultures. Attachment theory explains how the parent-child relationship emerges and influences subsequent development.To compare and contrast will be to emphasise the similarities and differences of both Harlow and Ainsworth’s work on understanding attachment, to which they have both made great contribution. Attachment refers to the mutually affectionate developing bond between a mother and any other caregiver. It is a bond in which the infant sees the caregiver as a protective and security figure. Failing to form any type of attachment during the earliest years of childhood is thought to lead to social and emotional developmental issues that can carry on well into adult life. Attachment Theory. Bowlby defined attachment as a “lasting psychological connectedness between human beings. His ethological theory of attachment suggests that infants have an innate need to form an attachment bond with a caregiver. The theory of attachment was originally developed by John Bowlby, a British psychoanalyst who was attempting to understand the intense distress experienced by infants who had been separated from their parents. Bowlby observed that separated infants would go to extraordinary lengths to prevent separation from their parents or to reestablish proximity to a missing parent.