Ainsworth's Strange Situation

Learning Theory of Attachment

The learning theory account of attachment — sometimes called the cupboard love theory — proposes that attachment is not an innate or biologically programmed process but is instead acquired through the same principles of learning that govern all behaviour. The two main mechanisms proposed are classical conditioning and operant conditioning. Both treat the infant as a passive learner who develops a bond with the caregiver because that caregiver is reliably associated with pleasure and the reduction of discomfort.

Classical Conditioning

Classical conditioning, as described by Pavlov, involves learning through association. In the context of attachment, the account works as follows. Food is an unconditioned stimulus (UCS) that naturally and automatically produces pleasure — an unconditioned response (UCR) — in the infant. The mother (or primary caregiver) is initially a neutral stimulus (NS) — she produces no particular emotional response on her own. However, because the mother is repeatedly present when food is provided, she becomes associated with the pleasure of feeding. After sufficient pairings, the mother alone comes to elicit pleasure — she has become a conditioned stimulus (CS) that produces a conditioned response (CR) of pleasure and positive affect. Attachment, in this account, is this conditioned emotional response.

Operant Conditioning

Dollard and Miller (1950) extended the account using operant conditioning. When an infant is hungry, it experiences an uncomfortable internal drive state. Crying reduces this discomfort by attracting the caregiver, who provides food. The reduction of the hunger drive is primary reinforcement — a powerful, biologically built-in reward. The caregiver who provides this relief becomes associated with the reinforcement and acquires the properties of a secondary reinforcer: she becomes rewarding in her own right, even when food is not being provided. The infant is motivated to seek proximity to the caregiver because proximity has reliably been followed by drive reduction. This learned drive for proximity is, in the learning theory account, what we call attachment.

Evaluation

The learning theory account is parsimonious and draws on well-established principles of conditioning that have broad empirical support in other domains. However, it has been seriously challenged by a body of evidence that it struggles to accommodate. Most critically, Harlow's (1958) study showed that infant rhesus monkeys preferred a cloth surrogate that provided comfort over a wire surrogate that provided food — if the learning theory account were correct, the food-providing surrogate should have become the attachment figure. Schaffer and Emerson (1964) found that the primary attachment figure was often not the person who fed the infant, but the person who was most sensitively responsive to their signals — again contradicting the primacy of feeding. Bowlby argued that attachment is not a derived drive (secondary reinforcement from food) but a primary, biologically based motivational system in its own right. The learning theory account also fails to explain the specificity of attachment (why infants attach to particular individuals rather than anyone who feeds them) and the emotional intensity of the attachment bond.