P1C Causality: Attachment

Sample response

Attachment is the bond that develops between a child and their caregiver. One factor that may influence attachment is the way a caregiver responds to a child’s needs. When a parent responds to a child’s needs in a predictable way, the baby knows that they can trust the parent and they have secure attachment, but it does not directly cause it. Attachment is most likely the result of several interacting factors.

Psychologists believe children learn whether they can trust their caregivers. For example, when a baby is upset, a caregiver notices and responds by holding or feeding it. If this happens whenever the baby is upset, they may learn that they can trust their caregiver. Bowlby argued that these experiences contribute to an internal working model, which is the child's schema of themselves and their relationships with others. Inconsistent or unresponsive caregiving could increase the likelihood of insecure attachment.

However, establishing that caregiver sensitivity causes secure attachment is difficult because of the research methods used. A true experiment would require researchers to manipulate caregiver sensitivity and then measure its effect on attachment. It would be unethical to make caregivers ignore their babies to see whether insecure attachment develops. As a result, much attachment research is correlational or observational. Psychologists can find a relationship between sensitive parenting and secure attachment, but a correlation does not prove causality. It is also possible that the relationship is bidirectional. A parent’s behavior may affect the baby, but the baby's behavior may also affect how a parent responds.

There are also variables that may change affect the relationship between parents and children that could affect attachment. One example is social support. A parent with support from family and friends may find it easier to respond sensitively when under stress. Culture could also affect the relationship because cultures have different expectations about independence, physical closeness, and caregiving. This means that similar caregiver behaviors may not have exactly the same effect on attachment in every child or every culture. The inability for researchers to control confounding variables means that the validity is low and causality cannot be determined.

Measurement is another problem. Caregiver sensitivity is difficult to measure objectively. Researchers may observe caregivers interacting with their children, but the caregiver may behave differently because they know they are being observed. Researchers also have to decide what counts as "sensitive" behavior, and this may be influenced by cultural expectations or researcher bias. Attachment itself is also difficult to measure. Psychologists use the Strange Situation test to determine a child’s attachment style. However, a child's behavior in one situation may not completely represent the attachment relationship. In adults, attachment is often measured by self-reported questionnaires, where participants are asked to recall childhood experiences with the caregiver.  As this is retrospective data, it is open to memory biases.  The lack of validity of the data means that causality cannot be confidently stated.

There is evidence that a caregiver’s response to their child has an effect on attachment. However, it is difficult to say that caregiver sensitivity directly causes a particular attachment type. Ethical limitations prevent true experiments, moderating variables influence the relationship, and both sensitivity and attachment are difficult to measure accurately. Attachment may therefore be an example of domino causality, where several factors work together to produce an outcome.

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