What Is Attachment Theory?

Key Takeaways

• Early bonds with caregivers shape future relationships and emotional development.
• Consistent and responsive caregiving is essential for building secure attachments.

Attachment theory is a psychological framework for understanding the emotional bonds and relationships between people. It focuses on the early attachment patterns that form in childhood and how they influence trust, intimacy, and behavior in adult romantic relationships.

According to attachment theory, people are born with a need to seek closeness and security from caregivers. These early bonds set the foundation for later relationships and continue to influence attachments throughout life. The quality of these early bonds can influence how people relate to others, including how secure, anxious, or avoidant they are in close relationships.

Verywell / JR Bee

How Attachment Theory Works

Attachment is an emotional bond with another person. The earliest bonds formed by children with their caregivers have a tremendous impact that continues throughout life. Attachment also helps keep the infant close to the mother, thereby improving the child’s chances of survival.

• Innate: These bonds are the result of evolutionary processes. Children are born with an innate drive to form attachments with caregivers. Maintaining proximity to an attachment figure increases the likelihood of surviving to adulthood.
• Secure base: The central theme of attachment theory is that primary caregivers who are available and responsive to an infant’s needs foster a sense of security in the child. The infant learns that the caregiver is dependable, which creates a secure base for the child to then explore the world.

So what determines successful attachment? Behaviorists suggested that food led to the formation of this attachment behavior, but Bowlby and others demonstrated that nurturance and responsiveness were the primary determinants of attachment.

The Four Main Attachment Styles

There are four patterns of attachment:

• Secure attachment: Children who can depend on their caregivers show distress when separated and happiness when reunited, while still feeling confident that the caregiver will return. When frightened, securely attached children readily seek comfort from caregivers. This is the most common attachment style, with research suggesting that about 81.8% of people are securely attached.
• Anxious (ambivalent) attachment: Children with an ambivalent attachment style become very distressed when a parent leaves. Due to limited parental availability, these children cannot depend on their primary caregiver to be there when they need them. Recent research indicates that around 13.2% have an anxious/avoidant style.
• Avoidant attachment: Children with an avoidant attachment tend to avoid parents or caregivers, showing no preference between a caregiver and a complete stranger. This attachment style might be a result of abusive or neglectful caregivers. Children who are punished for relying on a caregiver will learn to avoid seeking help in the future.
• Disorganized attachment: Children with a disorganized attachment style display a confusing mix of behavior, seeming disoriented, dazed, or confused. They may avoid or resist the parent. Lack of a clear attachment pattern is likely linked to inconsistent caregiver behavior. In such cases, parents may serve as both a source of comfort and a source of fear, leading to disorganized behavior.

Origins of Attachment Theory

Attachment theory originated in the work of British psychologist John Bowlby, who was the first attachment theorist. He described attachment as a “lasting psychological connectedness between human beings.”

Bowlby was interested in understanding the anxiety and distress that children experience when separated from their primary caregivers. Other theories attempted to explain this in various ways:

• Thinkers like Freud suggested that infants become attached to the source of pleasure. Infants in the oral stage of development become attached to their mothers because they meet their oral needs.
• Some of the earliest behavioral theories suggested that attachment was simply a learned behavior. These theories proposed that attachment was merely the result of the feeding relationship between the child and the caregiver. Because the caregiver feeds the child and provides nourishment, the child becomes attached.

Bowlby observed that feedings did not diminish separation anxiety. Instead, he found that attachment was characterized by clear behavioral and motivational patterns. When children are frightened, they seek proximity to their primary caregiver for comfort and care.

Ainsworth’s “Strange Situation”

In her research in the 1970s, psychologist Mary Ainsworth expanded greatly upon Bowlby’s original work. Her groundbreaking “strange situation” study revealed the profound effects of attachment on behavior. In the study, researchers observed children between the ages of 12 and 18 months as they responded to a situation in which they were briefly left alone and then reunited with their mothers.

Based on the responses the researchers observed, Ainsworth described three major styles of attachment: secure attachment, ambivalent-insecure attachment, and avoidant-insecure attachment. Later, researchers Main and Solomon (1986) added a fourth attachment style called disorganized-insecure attachment based on their own research.

A number of studies since that time have supported Ainsworth’s attachment styles and have indicated that attachment styles also have an impact on behaviors later in life.

Maternal Deprivation Studies

Harry Harlow’s infamous studies on maternal deprivation and social isolation during the 1950s and 1960s also explored early bonds. In a series of experiments, Harlow demonstrated how such bonds emerge and the powerful impact they have on behavior and functioning.

In one version of his experiment, newborn rhesus monkeys were separated from their birth mothers and reared by surrogate mothers. The infant monkeys were placed in cages with two wire-monkey mothers. One of the wire monkeys held a bottle from which the infant monkey could obtain nourishment, while the other wire monkey was covered with a soft terry cloth.

While the infant monkeys would go to the wire mother to obtain food, they spent most of their days with the soft cloth mother. When frightened, the baby monkeys would turn to their cloth-covered mother for comfort and security.

Harlow’s work also demonstrated that early attachments were the result of receiving comfort and care from a caregiver rather than simply the result of being fed.

The Stages of Attachment

Researchers Rudolph Schaffer and Peggy Emerson analyzed the number of attachment relationships that infants form in a longitudinal study with 60 infants. The infants were observed every four weeks during the first year of life, and then once again at 18 months.

Based on their observations, Schaffer and Emerson outlined four distinct phases of attachment, including:

• Pre-attachment stage: From birth to 3 months, infants do not show any particular attachment to a specific caregiver. The infant’s signals, such as crying and fussing, naturally attract the caregiver’s attention, and the baby’s positive responses encourage the caregiver to remain close.
• Indiscriminate attachment: Between 6 weeks and 7 months of age, infants begin to show preferences for primary and secondary caregivers. Infants develop trust that the caregiver will respond to their needs. While they still accept care from others, infants begin to distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar people, responding more positively to the primary caregiver.
• Discriminate attachment: Between about 7 and 11 months of age, infants show a strong attachment and preference for a specific individual. They will protest when separated from the primary attachment figure (separation anxiety) and begin to display anxiety around strangers (stranger anxiety).
• Multiple attachments: After approximately 9 months of age, children begin to form strong emotional bonds with other caregivers beyond the primary attachment figure. This often includes a second parent, older siblings, and grandparents.

Factors That Influence Attachment

While this process may seem straightforward, there are some factors that can influence how and when attachments develop, including:

• Opportunity for attachment: Children who lack a primary caregiver, such as those raised in orphanages or foster care, may fail to develop the trust needed to form an attachment.
• Quality caregiving: When caregivers respond quickly and consistently, children learn that they can depend on the people who are responsible for their care, which is the essential foundation for attachment. This is a vital factor.

In some children, this lack of consistent care during early childhood may lead to attachment disorders. Failure to form early attachments can significantly affect social and emotional development.

The Lasting Impact of Early Attachment

Children who are securely attached as infants tend to develop stronger self-esteem and better self-reliance as they grow older. These children also tend to be:

• More independent
• Perform better in school
• Have successful social relationships
• Experience less depression and anxiety

Research suggests that failure to form secure attachments early in life can have a negative impact on behavior in later childhood and throughout life.

Children diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), conduct disorder (CD), or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) frequently display attachment problems, possibly due to early abuse, neglect, or trauma. Children adopted after the age of 6 months may have a higher risk of attachment problems.

Attachment Disorders

In some cases, children may also develop attachment disorders. There are two attachment disorders that may occur: reactive attachment disorder (RAD) and disinhibited social engagement disorder (DSED).

• Reactive attachment disorder occurs when children do not form healthy bonds with caregivers. This is often the result of early childhood neglect or abuse and results in problems with emotional management and patterns of withdrawal from caregivers.
• Disinhibited social engagement disorder affects a child’s ability to form bonds with others and often results from trauma, abandonment, abuse, or neglect. It is characterized by a lack of inhibition around strangers, often leading to excessively familiar behaviors around people they don’t know and a lack of social boundaries.

Adult Attachments

Although attachment styles displayed in adulthood are not necessarily the same as those seen in infancy, early attachments can seriously impact later relationships. Adults who were securely attached in childhood tend to have:

• Good self-esteem
• Strong romantic relationships
• The ability to self-disclose to others

Those with insecure attachments are more likely to struggle with trust and intimacy.

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

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By Kendra Cherry, MSEd

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the “Everything Psychology Book.”

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