We all have those friends we just want to be in the presence of whenever we can. Or maybe we want to have a girls day with our sisters. Maybe we want to go to family dinner with our parents. Or maybe spend a romantic evening with our significant other. Regardless, we develop a relationship with many people that is a type of attachment. As I think about my family and friends that I am missing from home, I wonder what it is exactly that caused me to develop such a close relationship with these people.

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When looking at attachment through the psychological perspective, we can examine John Bowlby’s view. Bowlby’s opinion on attachment stemmed from classical psychoanalysis, object relations theory, ethology, and evolutionary biology. Essentially, Bowlby concludes in the attachment theory that attachment is a developmental thing. He also says that the attachment theory diminishes the psychosexual stages of development. Keeping in mind, Bowlby’s experiment was observational. He looked at children in the absence of a maternal figure and made conclusions based on that. This issue with an observational study like this is third variables, such as another nurturing figure aside from the mother, and the possibility of chance.

Rudolph Schaffer and Peggy Emerson did a longitudinal study of 60 babies at monthly intervals for the first 18 months of life and described the different stages of attachment as:

1. Up to 3 months of age – indiscriminate attachment (baby attaches to any caregiver)
2. After 4 months – preference for certain people (baby learns to tell the difference between their primary caregivers and others, but will accept nurturing from anyone)
3. After 7 months – special preference for a single attachment figure (baby shows signs of fear and separation anxiety when not in the presence of the person they’ve attached too
4. After 9 months – multiple attachments (baby becomes more independent and forms multiple attachments)

Schaffer and Emerson concluded that more attachments formed with those who responded appropriately to the baby’s signals, a theory known as sensitive responsiveness.

So this explains a few possible ways that we were attached to our family members at birth, but what is it that causes these attachments as we grow older. My assumption would be that maybe friends, significant others, etc. do things that trigger a reminder of something that happened with our parents when we were babies. We probably subconsciously find comfort in knowing that someone else is able to give us the same feeling we were given as infants.

Crowell, Fraley, Chris, Shaver, and Cassidy looked at attachment from an adult system. They attempted to apply previous attachment theories to romantic attachment with adults. The issue is that they used self-report measures. Typically self-report measures are not the most accurate when attempting to reach conclusions.

Further into this study, Hazan and Shaver explored the possibility of romantic love as an attachment process. This attempt to carry out the attachment theory as infants into adulthood attachment focuses on three main components: secure, avoidant, and anxious/ambivalent. Hazan and Shaver performed two questionnaire studies where they found, “(a) relative prevalence of the three attachment styles is roughly the same in adulthood as in infancy, (b) the three kinds of adults differ predictably in the way they experience romantic love, and (c) attachment style is related in theoretically meaningful ways to mental models of self and social relationships and to relationship experiences with parents.” So it seems fairly likely that my prediction about the comparison of infancy attachment is carried through adulthood attachment.

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We conclude that:

• The attachment theory is biological and it is carried throughout our lives.
• Early relationships with parents set the pattern for relationships later in life.
• Ainsworth established that attachment gives security.
• Improper treatment as infants in any of the given phases can impact a person throughout the rest of their lives.
• We take our attachment styles with us throughout adulthood.

So what does this mean? Essentially, the way we formed attachments during infancy are carried throughout our lives as we form new attachments with new people. We’ve been attached to someone or more than one person at all times ever since birth.