If infants from Asian cultures engage in more self-soothing, are they more temperamentally resistant to stress? One study examined levels of the hormone cortisol in infants receiving an inoculation (Lewis et al., 1993). Cortisol, which is released as part of the fight-or-flight response, is often used as a marker of stress. Four-month-old Japanese infants showed a pronounced cortisol response, suggesting that they were experiencing great stress, coupled with little crying. The U.S. infants, on the other hand, displayed intense behavioral reactions to the pain and took longer to calm down, yet they displayed a lower cortisol response. In other words, although the Japanese babies appeared quiet and calm, they were more physiologically stressed than the U.S. infants. It seems that cultural views of the nature of arousal and emotional regulation influence parenting behaviors and ultimately infants’ responses to stressors (Friedlmeier et al., 2015).
Culture plays a role in emotional development. Japanese mothers tend to encourage their infants to develop close ties and depend on their assistance whereas North American mothers tend to emphasize autonomy.
Asahi Shimbun/Getty
In summary, we have seen that the cultures in which we are immersed influence how we interpret stimuli and respond to the world, including how we manifest stress. Culture also influences attachment.
Thinking in Context 6.3
1 In your view, is it possible for an infant with a difficult temperament to grow into a young child with an easy temperament? Why or why not?
2 Under what conditions might a child with an easy temperament become difficult?
Attachment in Infancy and Toddlerhood
Raj gurgles and cries out while lying in his crib. As his mother enters the room, he squeals excitedly. Raj’s mother smiles as she reaches into the crib, and Raj giggles with delight as she picks him up. Raj and his mother have formed an important emotional bond, called attachment. Attachment refers to a lasting emotional tie between two people who each strive to maintain closeness to the other and act to ensure that the relationship continues.
Attachment relationships serve as an important backdrop for emotional and social development. Our earliest attachments are with our primary caregivers, most often our mothers. It was once thought that feeding determined patterns of attachment. Freud, for example, emphasized the role of feeding and successful weaning on infants’ personality and well-being. Behaviorist theorists explain attachment as the result of the infants associating their mothers with food, a powerful reinforcer that satisfies a biological need. Certainly, feeding is important for infants’ health and well-being and offers opportunities for the close contact needed to develop attachment bonds, but feeding itself does not determine attachment. In one famous study, baby rhesus monkeys were reared with two inanimate surrogate “mothers”: one made of wire mesh and a second covered with terrycloth (see Figure 6.1). The baby monkeys clung to the terrycloth mother despite being fed only by the wire mother, suggesting that attachment bonds are not based on feeding but rather on contact comfort (Harlow & Zimmerman, 1959). So how does an attachment form, and what is its purpose?
Figure 6.1 Harlow’s Study: Contact Comfort and the Attachment Bond
This infant monkey preferred to cling to the cloth-covered mother even if fed by the wire mother. Harlow concluded that attachment is based on contact comfort rather than feeding.
Source: Harlow, H. F. (1958); Photo Researchers Inc.
Bowlby’s Ethological Perspective on Attachment
John Bowlby, a British psychiatrist, posed that early family experiences influence emotional disturbances not through feeding practices, conditioning, or psychoanalytic drives but via inborn tendencies to form close relationships. Specifically, Bowlby (1969, 1988) developed a theory of attachment that characterizes it as an adaptive behavior that evolved because it contributed to the survival of the human species. Inspired by ethology, particularly by Lorenz’s work on the imprinting of geese (see Chapter 1) and by observations of interactions of monkeys, Bowlby posited that humans are biologically driven to form attachment bonds with other humans. An attachment bond between caregivers and infants ensures that the two will remain in close proximity, thereby aiding the survival of the infant and, ultimately, the species. From this perspective, caregiving responses are inherited and are triggered by the presence of infants and young children.
Infants’ Signals and Adults’ Responses
From birth, babies develop a repertoire of behavior signals to which adults naturally attend and respond, such as smiling, cooing, and clinging. Crying is a particularly effective signal because it conveys negative emotion that adults can judge reliably, and it motivates adults to relieve the infants’ distress. Adults are innately drawn to infants, find infants’ signals irresistible, and respond in kind. For example, one recent study found that nearly 700 mothers in 11 countries (Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Cameroon, France, Kenya, Israel, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and the United States) tended to respond to their infants’ cries and distress by picking up, holding, and talking to their infants (Bornstein et al., 2017). Infants’ behaviors, immature appearance, and even smell draw adults’ responses (Kringelbach, Stark, Alexander, Bornstein, & Stein, 2016). Infants, in turn, are attracted to caregivers who respond consistently and appropriately to their signals. During the first months of life, infants rely on caregivers to regulate their states and emotions—to soothe them when they are distressed and help them establish and maintain an alert state (Thompson, 2013). Attachment behaviors provide comfort and security to infants because they bring babies close to adults who can protect them.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans support a biological component to attachment as first-time mothers show specific patterns of brain activity in response to infants. Mothers’ brains light up with activity when they see their own infants’ faces, and areas of the brain that are associated with rewards are activated specifically in response to happy, but not sad, infant faces (Strathearn, Jian, Fonagy, & Montague, 2008). In response to their infants’ cries, U.S., Chinese, and Italian mothers show brain activity in regions associated with auditory processing, emotion, and the intention to move and speak, suggesting automatic responses to infant expressions of distress (Bornstein et al., 2017).
Phases of Attachment
Bowlby proposed that attachment formation progresses through several developmental phases during infancy, from innate behaviors that bring the caregiver into contact to a mutual attachment relationship. With each phase, infants’ behavior becomes increasingly organized, adaptable, and intentional.
Phase 1: Preattachment—Indiscriminate Social Responsiveness (Birth to 2 Months): Infants instinctively elicit caregiving responses from caregivers by crying, smiling, and making eye contact with adults. Infants respond to any caregiver who reacts to their signals, whether parent, grandparent,