Question 1

Which British psychiatrist is generally credited with founding attachment theory in the 1950s and 1960s?

Accepted Answer

John Bowlby. John Bowlby's trilogy 'Attachment,' 'Separation,' and 'Loss' established attachment as a primary motivational system, drawing on ethology, psychoanalysis, and evolutionary biology.

Question 2

Mary Ainsworth designed which experimental procedure to study infant attachment?

Accepted Answer

The Strange Situation. Ainsworth's Strange Situation, published in the 1970s, observed how one-year-olds responded to brief separations and reunions with their caregiver, allowing researchers to classify attachment behavior.

Question 3

Where did Mary Ainsworth conduct the foundational fieldwork that informed the Strange Situation?

Accepted Answer

Kampala, Uganda and later Baltimore. Ainsworth observed mother-infant pairs in Uganda in the 1950s and later in Baltimore, Maryland, building her classification system from naturalistic data before designing the laboratory procedure.

Question 4

Which 1987 paper extended attachment theory to adult romantic relationships?

Accepted Answer

Hazan and Shaver's 'Romantic Love Conceptualized as an Attachment Process'. Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver's 1987 paper applied Ainsworth's three categories to adult romantic relationships, sparking decades of adult attachment research.

Question 5

Mary Main and Judith Solomon proposed which fourth infant attachment category in the 1980s?

Accepted Answer

Disorganized. Main and Solomon identified a 'disorganized' pattern for infants whose behavior in the Strange Situation did not fit secure, avoidant, or resistant categories, often reflecting frightening caregiving.

Question 6

Which interview, developed by Mary Main and colleagues, assesses adults' coherent narratives about their own childhood attachments?

Accepted Answer

The Adult Attachment Interview. The Adult Attachment Interview, developed in the mid-1980s, classifies adults based on how coherently they discuss early relationships, not on what those relationships were like.

Question 7

Which researcher's mid-twentieth-century studies with rhesus monkeys demonstrated the importance of contact comfort over feeding for attachment?

Accepted Answer

Harry Harlow. Harry Harlow's experiments at the University of Wisconsin showed infant monkeys preferred a soft cloth surrogate to a wire one that provided food, supporting Bowlby's argument that attachment is more than feeding.

Question 8

Which two dimensions are most often used in modern self-report measures of adult attachment?

Accepted Answer

Anxiety and avoidance. Researchers including Brennan, Clark, and Shaver mapped adult attachment along anxiety (worry about rejection) and avoidance (discomfort with closeness) in the Experiences in Close Relationships scale.

Question 9

What does the term 'earned security' describe?

Accepted Answer

Adults who develop coherent, secure functioning despite difficult early caregiving. Earned security, identified through Adult Attachment Interview research, refers to adults who reflect coherently on hard childhoods and function securely in adult relationships.

Question 10

Which couples therapy approach, developed by Sue Johnson, is most directly grounded in attachment theory?

Accepted Answer

Emotionally Focused Therapy. Sue Johnson's Emotionally Focused Therapy treats couple distress as protest against threatened attachment bonds and helps partners build new, secure interactional patterns.

Attachment Research History: Bowlby, Ainsworth, and Beyond

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