Attachment: Schaffer and Emerson (1964)
Stages of attachment.
Schaffer & Emerson (1964) conducted an experiment to investigate the age at which specific attachments developed, specifically the age at which they form, the emotional intensity and the person they were directed towards.
AO1 Method They investigated the early behaviour of 60 babies (31 male-29 female) from working class families that lived in Glasgow. The babies were visited consistently every month for the first year and then were only visited after 18 months.
The data came from the caregivers perspectives in the form of diary entries and were purely observation based. The caregivers were told to keep a diary of major events that occurred throughout each day. They were also interviewed on the child’s response to separation.
The attachment they observed was measured in two ways over 7 'normal' situations:
Separation anxiety
Stranger anxiety
AO1 Findings
Schaffer and Emerson found that 50% of the babies showed separation anxiety towards a certain caregiver during the 25 to 32-week period.
One month after an attachment was formed the child began to show stranger anxiety.
They found that the care giver that gave the most interaction was usually the one who the child was most attached to.
By the 40-week period, 30% of the babies had developed multiple attachments and 80% had developed a specific attachment.
By 18 months 75% of the babies had shown an attachment to their father and had shown separation anxiety between both parents.
Through these findings Schaffer and Emerson were able to identify four stages of attachment:
Stage 1: Asocial stage (first few weeks) - behaviour between non-human and human is the same, has a need for the caregiver that can calm them down.
Stage 2: Indiscriminate stage (2-7 months) – Develops a preference for people, and can distinguish familiar adults but allows comfort from others, no sign of any form of anxiety.
Stage 3: Specific attachment (7 months+) - Shows signs of both types of anxiety towards a specific care giver.
Stage 4: Multiple attachments (8 months+) - Secondary attachment has formed, and by the first year most have multiple attachments.
AO3 Evaluation
Negatives for experiment
The sample of children used is very small and only represents the working class in a specific location. The study cannot be generalised to other situations.
Mothers were responsible for their own diaries and so might have lied if they had done something bad for example or forgotten and made something up.
Negatives for stages
The asocial stage is difficult to record as the babies have little observable behaviour or coordination.
Does not explain when multiple attachments occur.
It’s difficult to measure multiple attachments as the baby could be distressed for many reasons other than the lack of a caregiver.
The two definitions for behaviour (stranger and separation) are too broad of an explanation of attachment.
Positives for experiment
Longitudinal studies were more reliable and valid
Behaviour was less likely to be influenced by external factors as it was done in the home (good external validity)
Positives for stages
Although babies don’t have much behaviour early on, Carpenter (1975) found that babies matched faces to voices and got distressed if they didn’t match.
According to Van Ljzendoorn (1993) children in collectivist cultures develop multiple attachments early as work is shared in the family
Cernoch et al (1977) found that when a child was breastfed it would prefer the scent of its mother’s milk.
