Introduction to Attachment Theory: Behavioural System and Individual Differences

2019 ◽  
pp. 23-42
Author(s):  
Chia-Huei Wu
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Attachment Theory ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Internal Working Models ◽  
Behavioral Systems ◽  
Working Models ◽  
Internal Working ◽  
Behavioral System ◽  
And Behaviors

The aim of this chapter is to introduce attachment theory to provide a knowledge background for applying the theory to understand employee proactivity. This chapter firstly introduces the concept of behavioral system in attachment theory and then specifically elaborates the development and operation of an attachment behavioral system, the central behavioral system that can shape operation of other behavioral systems. Finally, the chapter elaborates how the development of the attachment behavioral system shapes individuals’ internal working models of self, others, and the broader social environment which continuously guide an individual’s attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors in later life.

Adult Attachment and Compassion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mario Mikulincer ◽  
Phillip R. Shaver
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Prosocial Behavior ◽  
Attachment Theory ◽  
Safe Haven ◽  
Support Provision ◽  
Behavioral Systems ◽  
Caregiving System ◽  
Behavioral System ◽  
Optimal Functioning ◽  
Sense Of Security

According to attachment theory (Bowlby, 1973, 1982), the optimal functioning of the attachment behavioral system and the resulting sense of security in dealing with life’s challenges and difficulties facilitate the functioning of other behavioral systems, including the caregiving system that governs the activation of prosocial behavior and compassionate acts of helping needy others. In this chapter, we focus on what we have learned about the interplay of the attachment and caregiving systems and their effects on compassion and altruism. We begin by explaining the behavioral system construct in more detail and show how individual differences in a person’s attachment system affect the functioning of the caregiving system. We review examples from the literature on attachment, focusing on what attachment theorists call providing a “safe haven” for needy others. We then review studies that have shown how individual differences in attachment affect empathy, compassion, and support provision.

L'uso del modello dell'attaccamento individuale nel lavoro di coppia basato sulla psicologia del sé/intersoggettiva

INTERAZIONI ◽  
2009 ◽  
pp. 55-65
Author(s):  
Shelley R. Doctors
Keyword(s):  
Attachment Theory ◽  
Internal Working Models ◽  
Working Models ◽  
Internal Working ◽  
Royal Road ◽  
Effective Synthesis ◽  
Couples Treatment ◽  
Psychological Organization ◽  
Intersubjective Theory ◽  
Organizing Principles

- In this article Shelley Doctors presents an effective synthesis of three different theoretical contributions in the contemporary psychoanalytic field: Self Psychology, Intersubjective Perspective, Attachment Theory and the effects resulting from similar combination about Psychoanalytic Couples Treatment. In her paper, Doctors summarizes and redefines, compares and differentiates the basic concepts of the different theories with particular reference to organizing principles, to internal working models, narrative themes and to Bowlby's Attachment Theory. The paper states and demonstrates through a clinical vignette, how recognizing the internal working models aids the couples treatment based on Self Psychological/intersubjective theory. According to Doctors "the psychological organization emerging from the negotiation of attachment needs can be a ‘royal road' for the intersubjective understanding".

scholarly journals Toward a Radically Embodied Neuroscience of Attachment and Relationships?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lane Beckes ◽  
Hans IJzerman
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Social Contact ◽  
Internal Working Models ◽  
Working Models ◽  
Internal Working ◽  
Separation Distress ◽  
Support Seeking ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Relationship Cognition

Attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969/1982) posits the existence of internal working models as a foundational feature of human bonds. Radical embodied approaches instead suggest that cognition requires no computation or representation, favoring a cognition situated in a body in an environmental context with affordances for action (Barrett, 2011; Chemero, 2009; Wilson & Golonka, 2013). We explore whether embodied approaches to social soothing, interpersonal warmth, separation distress, and support seeking could replace representational constructs such as internal working models with a view of relationship cognition anchored in the resources afforded to the individual by their brain, body, and environment in interaction.We review the neurobiological bases for social attachments and relationships and attempt to delineate how these systems overlap or don’t with more basic physiological systems in ways that support or contradict a radical embodied explanation. We suggest that many effects might be the result of the fact that relationship cognition depends on and emerges out of the action of neural systems that regulate several clearly physically grounded systems. For example, the neuropeptide oxytocin appears to be central to attachment and pair-bond behavior (Carter & Keverne, 2002) and is implicated in social thermoregulation more broadly, being necessary for maintaining a warm body temperature as has been discovered in rats (Kasahara et al., 2007) and humans (Beck et al., 1979).Finally, we discuss the most challenging issues around taking a radically embodied perspective on social relationships. We find the most crucial challenge in individual differences in support seeking and responses to social contact, which have long been thought to be a function of representational structures in the mind (e.g., Baldwin, 1995). Together we entertain the thought to explain such individual differences without mediating representations or computations.This paper was published in Frontiers:Beckes, L., IJzerman, H., & Tops, M. (2015). Toward a radically embodied neuroscience of attachment and relationships. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 9.

Connecting the Moral Core: Examining Moral Baby Research Through an Attachment Theory Perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-18
Author(s):  
Audrey-Ann Deneault ◽  
Stuart I. Hammond
Keyword(s):  
Attachment Theory ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Third Parties ◽  
Moral Sense ◽  
Internal Working Models ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Working Models ◽  
The Core ◽  
Internal Working ◽  
Third Person

Infants care for and are cared for by others from early in life, a fact reflected in infants' morality and attachment. According to moral core researchers, infants are born with a moral sense that allows them to care about and evaluate the actions of third parties. In attachment theory, care manifests through infants' relationships with caregivers, which forms representations called internal working models that shape how babies think, feel, and act. Although accumulating evidence supports the existence of a moral core directed toward others, nevertheless, without a notion of care connected to infants' own lives, the core is an incomplete and underpowered construct. We show how the moral core, like attachment, could emerge in first- and second-person working models that develop through social interaction and incorporate representational forms (embodied, social, cognitive, emotional, moral), which contribute to the emergence of third-person representations and give infants' moral sense its vitality and meaning.

Il bambino nella famiglia e l'intervento basato sull'attaccamento

2009 ◽  
pp. 11-28
Author(s):  
Grazia Attili
Keyword(s):  
Attachment Theory ◽  
Infants And Children ◽  
Intervention Programs ◽  
Internal Working Models ◽  
Working Models ◽  
Internal Working ◽  
In Infants And Children

- In this paper the basic constructs of the attachment theory are reported. The pathological outcomes of an inadequate maternage are taken in consideration and they are suggested intervention programs, as far as concerns disorders in infants and children, based on a modification of parents' caregiving and of fathers' and mothers' attachment Internal Working Models.

Internal Working Models, Trust, and Sharing among Foragers

2000 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 287
Author(s):  
Hewlett ◽  
Lamb ◽  
Leyendecker ◽  
Schölmerich
Keyword(s):  
Internal Working Models ◽  
Working Models ◽  
Internal Working
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