kb/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_theory-1.md

title	chunk	source	category	tags	date_saved	instance
Attachment theory	2/12	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_theory	reference	science, encyclopedia	2026-05-05T15:31:31.580137+00:00	kb-cron

Human beings have an intrinsic need for one-to-one bonding. The regulation of emotion and fear contributes to vitality. Attachment fosters adaptiveness and growth.

==== Primate beginnings ==== While Bowlby argued that attachment behaviour was a product of human evolution, citing evidence that infant primates also form attachments, he did not distinguish between species that breed cooperatively—passing newborns readily from adult to adult, as in marmosets and tamarins—and those that rear their young jealously in one-to-one relationships, such as gorillas and chimpanzees. He proposed that one-to-one attachment behaviours, along with their associated emotions, were adaptive in the young of all primates that socialised in the possessive one-to-one manner of gorillas and chimpanzees—a group he mistakenly believed included human hunter-gatherers and, by extension, our Stone Age ancestors. The long-term evolution of any social species necessarily involves selection for social behaviours—in both infants and adults—that increase the likelihood of individual or group survival. Distinctively, Bowlby's theory did not address the extent to which primate infant survival depended on the caregiving behaviour of older companions. His theory primarily attributed infant survival to innate capacities in newborns themselves. As a result, it initially sidelined protective advantages of adult vigilance and caregiving, emphasizing instead toddlers' own efforts to remain close to familiar figures when distressed. This emphasis led him to argue that the crucial factor in infant safety and survival—both in contemporary contexts and during prehuman adaptation—was the acquisition and development of an innate attachment system, which now underpins the panhuman social psychology of infancy.

==== Hunter-gatherers ==== While citing no ethnographic evidence, Bowlby pictured the evolutionary environment of early pre-human adaptation as one in which, like gorillas and chimpanzees, the infant was always in close proximity to their mother, being "carried by his mother on her back", a picture which he (incorrectly) assumed also to represent current hunter-gatherer societies. In sidelining the efficacy of protective caregiving initiatives from the infant's older companions, that is the caregiving behavioural system, he was led to propose that there would be a survival necessity for infants to evolve the capacity to sense possibly dangerous conditions such as isolation from companions or rapid approach by strangers. Hence, according to Bowlby, evolution must have ensured that young children's proximity-seeking to a mother-figure in the face of threat has become the "set-goal" of what he called the attachment instinct or attachment behavioural system.

==== Monotropy ==== Reflecting his own experience and his observations of English families, Bowlby believed the one-to-oneness of the child's first strong relationship was a human universal, using the term "monotropy" to describe it. Attachments form most obviously if the infant lives in social conditions which mean he or she has only one caregiver, with, perhaps, some occasional care from a small number of other people. Around the world, from the start of life onwards, most children have many more than one important figure in their lives with whom they may smile, cry, cling, and play, or to whom (in Bowlby's language) they may "direct attachment behaviour". As within hunter-gatherer tribes, babies born into extended families are often raised cooperatively—a possibility Bowlby apparently did not consider. So, researchers and theorists have abandoned the concept of monotropy insofar as it may be taken to mean the relationship with the special figure differs qualitatively from that of other figures. Instead, current attachment theorists postulate very young children develop hierarchies of relationship.

==== From observable behaviour to internal cognitions ==== As empirical research has eroded direct observational support—both for the universal existence of attachment behaviours and for stranger fear and separation anxiety—in human infants, the theory has come to emphasize the importance of early experiences with caregivers as giving rise to an internal system of thoughts, memories, beliefs, expectations, emotions, and behaviours about the self and others. This system, called by attachment advocates the "internal working model of social relationships", is hypothesized to continue to develop with time and experience. While these internal working models still lack any agreed definition, attachment theory now holds that they regulate, interpret, and predict attachment-related behaviour in the self and in the attachment figure. Supposing they develop in line with environmental and developmental changes, they would then incorporate the capacity to reflect and communicate about past and future attachment relationships. As such, they would enable the growing child to handle new types of social interactions; knowing, for example, that an infant should be treated differently from an older child, or that interactions with teachers and parents share characteristics. Internal working models are hypothesized to continue to develop through adulthood, helping cope with friendships, marriage, and parenthood, all of which involve different behaviours and feelings. For example, one article has found that athletes who have strong relationships with their coaches thrive more than those who do not, especially if their needs are met. Some see this finding as a confirmation of attachment theory and the importance of internal working models.

==== Changes with age ====