The Attachment Behavioral System
Chapter Two of Bowlby’s Attachment trilogy is titled “Observations to be Explained”. He begins this chapter with a poem fragment:
A child forsaken, waking suddenly,
Whose gaze afeard on all things round doth rave,
And seeth only that it cannot see
The meeting eyes of love.
George Eliot
Mikulincer and Shaver (2012) explain:
“Bowlby (1982) stated that the biological function of the attachment system is to protect indivduals (especially during infancy and childhood, but later in life as well) from danger by assuring that they maintain proximity to loving and supportive others (attachment figures). The proximal goal of the system is to attain a subjective sense of protection or security… which normally terminates the system’s activaiton. The goal of attaining security is made salient by perceived threats and dangers, which drive people to seek actual or symbolic proximty to attachment figures…. However, when attachment figures are not reliably available, responsive, and supportive, individuals fail to attain a sense of attachment security and are likely to construct negative working models, experience heightened worries about about self-protection and lovability, and adopt stratgies of affect regulation.. other than appropriate proximity seeking…
Attachment theorists… emphasize two such secondary strategies: hyperactivation and deactivation of the attachment sytsem. Hyperactivation is manifested in energetic attempts to gain greater proximity, support, and protection, combined with a lack of confidence that it will be provided. Deactivation of the system involves inhibition of proximity-seeking tendencies, denial of attachment needs, maintenance of emotional and cognitive distance from others, and compulsive reliance on oneself as the only dependable source of comfort and protection.”1
Mikulincer and Shaver associate the attachment system with Panksepp’s PANIC and SEEKING neural circuitries:
Bowlby’s ideas about the predisposition to seek proximity to others to obtain care and protection have received extensive support. In times of need, infants show a clear preference for their familiar care-giver, engage in intense proximity seeking, and are soothed by a caregiver’s presence and support… Conceptually parallel research with adults has shown that people are likely to turn to key others for support while, or immediately after, encounter stressors… [Mikulincer and Shaver cite evidence that]… fits with Panksepp’s (1998, 2011) ideas concerning the linkage between stress-related neural systems and attachment-system activation in rodents and other mammals. Panksepp proposed that the mammalian brain contains an integrated social emotion system that includes both a separation-distress circuitry (PANIC) and a social-reward/contact-comfort circuitry (SEEKING). The PANIC circuity overlaps with the physical pain circuitry, elicits distress-related responses, and activates the SEEKING circuit, which fosters proximity seeking - a key component of attachment.2
The Experiences in Close Relationships - Revised scale (ECR-R) is a self-report instrument used to assess hyper-activation and deactivation of the adult attachment system.3
Examples of items in the ECR-R scale
Hyper-activated attachment system thought:
“My desire to be vey close sometimes scares people away”.
Hypo-activated attachment system thought:
“I prefer not to show a partner how I feel deep down.”
Mikulincer, M. & Shaver, P. R. (2012). Adult attachment and caregiving: Individual differences in providing a safe haven and secure base to others”. In S. L. Brown, R. M. Brown, and L. A. Penner (Eds.) Moving Beyond Self Interest: Perspectives from Evolutioanry Biology, Neuroscience, and the Social Sciences. Oxford University Press, (pp. 40 - 41).
Mikulincer, M. & Shaver, P.R. (2011). Attachment theory: a behavioral system approach for studying species-universal and individual-differences aspects of the social mind. In T.K. Shackelford (Ed.) The Sage Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology. Sage Publications, (pp. 10 - 11).