IB Psychology SLTopic 2 — Development of the SelfPaper 1 & 2Key study~11 min read
What Happens When Attachment Is Missing
Bowlby argued that a strong early bond is essential. The obvious test of that claim is to look at children who never got one. His answer was uncomfortable, influential, and — as later researchers pointed out — built on a confusion he never quite cleared up.
📘 What you need to know
Lack of attachment happens in two ways: the child never had the chance to attach, or the child had a bond and lost it through separation.
Bowlby called long separation from the primary carer maternal deprivation (1953).
The consequences can be emotional and intellectual: delayed literacy, antisocial behaviour, depression, impulsivity.
The damage comes mainly from the absence of emotional care, not simply from the person being physically absent.
Long-term effects include difficulty forming normal relationships, and lack of attachment is a risk factor for criminality.
Key study: Bowlby’s 44 thieves study (1944), which linked early separation to what he called affectionless psychopathy.
The big criticism: Bowlby may have confused deprivation (a bond broken) with privation (a bond never formed).
Two different things, one word
This distinction is the single most useful thing on this page. Get it right and half the evaluation writes itself.
If you can only remember one evaluation point about the 44 thieves study, make it this one. Many of those children had chaotic early lives and may never have formed a bond in the first place.
A quick trick for the spelling and the meaning. Deprivation has the “de” of “delete” — something was there and got removed. Privation is closer to “primitive” — there was nothing there from the start.
What lack of attachment does
Bowlby’s maternal deprivation hypothesis said that losing the primary bond during the early years damages development in two areas at once.
Intellectual effects
Delayed language and literacy, and lower measured ability. A child who is not talked to, read to or played with is missing the input development runs on.
Emotional effects
Antisocial behaviour, depression, impulsivity, and trouble forming normal relationships later. Bowlby saw these as the more serious of the two.
Bowlby’s key claim about the mechanism is easy to miss: the harm comes from the absence of emotional care. A child in a well-run institution who is fed, warm and clean can still be deprived, because nobody is responding to them as an individual.
Definition
Maternal deprivation = the loss of emotional care from the primary attachment figure through prolonged or repeated separation during the early years.
The key study
KEY STUDY
Bowlby (1944) — the 44 thieves
Aim
To investigate the social, emotional and psychological effects of maternal deprivation.
Sample
An opportunity sample of 88 children from a London child guidance clinic, all described as emotionally maladjusted. 44 had been accused of theft; the other 44, with no history of theft, formed the control group.
Method
Children were interviewed for signs of being an affectionless psychopath — Bowlby’s term for someone who lacks empathy, is callous, and has no sense that actions have consequences.
Families were also interviewed, to find out whether the thieves had experienced long separations from their caregivers, for example repeated stays in hospital or foster homes with few family visits.
The thieves’ data was then compared with the control group’s.
Findings
14 of the 44 thieves were classed as affectionless psychopaths. Of those 14, 86% had experienced prolonged separation in their first two years. Among the remaining thieves the figure was 17%. In the control group it was only 5%.
Conclusion
Prolonged, early separation from caregivers is linked to affectionless psychopathy.
Also worth noticing: 40% of the thieves as a whole had experienced early separation, which is a lot — but the really extreme figure belongs to the small affectionless subgroup of 14.
Evaluating the research
Strengths
Limitations
Supported by later work. Women separated from their mothers for at least a year showed depression or anxiety at around 25%, against roughly 15% in a comparison group with no separation.
Confirmation bias. Bowlby conducted the interviews himself, knowing his own hypothesis, so he may have looked harder for affectionless traits in the thieves.
Effects were worse for earlier separation. Mental health problems were more intense in those separated before the age of six, which fits the sensitive period idea.
Deprivation confused with privation. Many of the 44 thieves had disrupted early lives and may never have formed an attachment at all.
Enormous real-world value. It changed hospital and residential care, especially by encouraging regular family visits.
Retrospective data. Separation histories came from interviews years later, so memory error is likely.
A control group was used, which makes the comparison far more convincing than a case study would be.
Not generalisable. An opportunity sample of clinic children in wartime London, all already emotionally maladjusted.
The strongest single criticism. Separation almost never happens on its own. Children who spend long periods in hospital or foster care are also more likely to be experiencing poverty, illness, family conflict or bereavement. Any of those could produce the same outcome, so blaming separation alone overstates the case.
Link to concepts
Change: this research genuinely changed how societies treat children. Restricted visiting hours in hospitals were normal before Bowlby, and are unthinkable now.
Perspective: Bowlby placed attachment at the centre of identity, arguing that evolution produced a behaviour essential to infant survival.
Bias: a researcher who collects the data, knows the hypothesis and classifies the outcomes is a real threat to objectivity. Independent raters would fix it.
Exam practice
EXAM QUESTION
Evaluate research into the effects of lack of attachment. [22]
This question is generous, because the study has one very famous flaw. Build the essay around it.
Define the terms first
Deprivation = bond broken. Privation = bond never formed. Say why the difference matters.
Describe the study efficiently
Bowlby (1944): 88 clinic children, 44 thieves + 44 controls, interviews, 14 affectionless.
Give the numbers86% of the affectionless group vs 17% of other thieves vs 5% of controlsEvaluate the method
Retrospective interviews + Bowlby as sole interviewer → confirmation bias.
Evaluate the conclusion
Correlational, and separation travels with poverty, illness and conflict → other causes possible.
Evaluate the concept
Deprivation and privation were not properly separated.
Judgement: the link is real, but “separation causes it” is too strongbalance it — the real-world impact was genuinely enormous
💡 Exam tips
Open by separating deprivation and privation. It signals a strong answer immediately.
Learn the three percentages. They are short, specific and easy to drop into a paragraph.
Say that harm comes from the loss of emotional care, not from physical absence on its own.
Use the phrase risk factor, not “cause”, when writing about criminality.
Balance the criticism with the real-world impact on hospitals and care homes — that is a genuine strength.
If asked about ethics, note the sensitivity of interviewing vulnerable children about their family lives.
⚠ Common mix-ups
Saying maternal deprivation causes criminality. It is one risk factor among many, in a correlational study.
Thinking all 44 thieves were affectionless psychopaths. Only 14 of them were.
Using deprivation and privation as synonyms. They are the key distinction on this page.
Assuming “maternal” means only mothers. Bowlby meant the primary attachment figure.
Treating the study as an experiment. It used interviews and comparison groups, with no manipulated variable.
Forgetting that separation rarely comes alone. Poverty, illness and family breakdown usually come with it.
Up next: Enculturation and a Sense of Self — attachment explains the first relationship. The next question is how the whole culture around a child gets inside them without anyone ever teaching it directly.
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