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How Attachment Theory Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
0:13
Speaker 1: and there in the past or the future, I can't tell.
0:16
Speaker 1: It's Chuck and Jerry's here hanging out on the ether.
0:19
Speaker 1: And that makes this stuff you should know hanging out
0:22
Speaker 1: in the ether. She's ethereal she's actually on ether too,
0:27
Speaker 1: to really complete the whole circle. Oh boy, I wish
0:30
Speaker 1: I was so um Chuck, surely you've heard of attachment
0:35
Speaker 1: theory before. It's so fully ingrained into pop culture that
0:40
Speaker 1: I would be really surprised if there are many of
0:42
Speaker 1: our listeners out there who aren't at least passingly familiar
0:45
Speaker 1: with it. Yeah. I had heard of it, and it's um.
0:48
Speaker 1: You know. I think this is a very instructive episode
0:51
Speaker 1: for brand new parents because even if you think you
0:56
Speaker 1: kind of know something about it, I learned a lot. Uh,
0:59
Speaker 1: it's you light now because you know, my daughter's seven
1:02
Speaker 1: and a half, so we already screwed up, right. But
1:06
Speaker 1: if you're just starting out with the baby, like, start early,
1:09
Speaker 1: because whatever you do makes a big impact on their
1:15
Speaker 1: adult life. Even Yeah, I think that's one of the
1:17
Speaker 1: things that makes this so interesting, is like you've got
1:21
Speaker 1: a really narrow window to not screw up your kid,
1:25
Speaker 1: and it's it's you. It's on you, like you, the
1:28
Speaker 1: primary caregiver, are responsible for your kids or not, so,
1:32
Speaker 1: says attachment theory. A lot of people question that. A
1:34
Speaker 1: lot of people say humans are way too complex, there's
1:38
Speaker 1: way too many genetic and environmental and social forces working
1:42
Speaker 1: on the individual to shape them. Or but there there
1:46
Speaker 1: does seem to be like a lot of validity to
1:48
Speaker 1: attachment theory, even if it isn't like the thing that
1:51
Speaker 1: forms our personality. Yeah, and I think it's one of
1:54
Speaker 1: those cool things that like, uh and you know, we're
1:59
Speaker 1: going to talk about the history of it, but it
2:00
Speaker 1: seems like kind of almost right away when we started
2:04
Speaker 1: figuring out that there was attachment, there were some people,
2:08
Speaker 1: even though it's gotten way more popular over the years,
2:11
Speaker 1: to sort of look into this stuff, some people kind
2:13
Speaker 1: of really early on, we're like, all right, well, why
2:16
Speaker 1: like let's try and figure this thing out. Yeah, because attachment, um,
2:20
Speaker 1: we should define it. It's basically a bond, an affinity
2:25
Speaker 1: for that an infant has for their caregiver in vice
2:28
Speaker 1: versa typically um and it is seems to be universal
2:33
Speaker 1: that bond, that attachment between baby and caregiver around the world.
2:38
Speaker 1: It just seems to be a human thing. Uh. It
2:41
Speaker 1: also seems to show up in the animal kingdom, especially
2:44
Speaker 1: among other mammals and primates. Um, it is a thing.
2:48
Speaker 1: And like you said, people are like, but why, And
2:50
Speaker 1: they started asking why after Darwin came along. So the
2:54
Speaker 1: framework that everybody was looking at this through was evolution
2:57
Speaker 1: natural selection. And the first kind of dominant explanation for
3:01
Speaker 1: the whole thing, which we'll get into a little more later,
3:04
Speaker 1: was behaviorism. And the upshot of behaviorism as it was
3:07
Speaker 1: as it applies to um, that bond that forms between
3:12
Speaker 1: baby and caregiver, Um is that the baby wants to
3:16
Speaker 1: be fed, and the caregiver feeds the baby. Ergo, the
3:18
Speaker 1: baby feels good about the caregiver. Yeah, and who cares
3:22
Speaker 1: about your emotions? Yeah, we can't study those anyways. Was
3:27
Speaker 1: kind of the prevailing theory. Yeah, that's exactly right. But
3:30
Speaker 1: then along comes a guy and a lady and another
3:35
Speaker 1: guy riding in on their ponies. It was strangely enough.
3:43
Speaker 1: Uh No, it was a guy named John Bowlby. Uh.
3:46
Speaker 1: There was a woman named Mary Ainsworth, and then there
3:48
Speaker 1: was another guy. Uh, named William Blatts will show up
3:51
Speaker 1: later and like we'll talk about them a little more
3:54
Speaker 1: in a second. But Bowlby basically was among a small
3:58
Speaker 1: handful of people who said that whole behaviorist um explanation
4:03
Speaker 1: doesn't hold up because you can feed a baby and
4:07
Speaker 1: the baby will still be crying, the baby will still
4:09
Speaker 1: want the caregiver um, and sometimes a caregiver can sue
4:14
Speaker 1: the baby without any food. So I don't think it's
4:17
Speaker 1: just food that thereafter. I think it's something more, um, intangible,
4:21
Speaker 1: but just as important as food. Yeah, like if your
4:25
Speaker 1: baby scared, it's yeah, it's not all just about that.
4:29
Speaker 1: You know that milk that you're getting, and you know
4:32
Speaker 1: that stuff is important. Like we talked about in the
4:34
Speaker 1: breastfeeding episode. Uh, you know, we covered you know, those
4:38
Speaker 1: kinds of bonds and attachments that can happen from mother
4:41
Speaker 1: to baby, but we also talked about the fact that
4:45
Speaker 1: that's not you know, the end all be all, necessarily right. No, Yeah,
4:50
Speaker 1: definitely milk is important. Food is important, but they're not
4:53
Speaker 1: breastfeeding bond. Sure, oh the bond, sure, I get to yeah,
4:57
Speaker 1: but the so, yeah, that bond in and of its
5:00
Speaker 1: self is what Bowlby and attachment theory says, is the
5:04
Speaker 1: important part of the bond. It's the bond. It bond.
5:07
Speaker 1: The bond isn't like some um you know, byproduct of
5:10
Speaker 1: that need for food and satisfying of the need for food.
5:14
Speaker 1: It is the thing that the kid wants and that
5:17
Speaker 1: the caregiver gives to the kid a bond, a connection,
5:20
Speaker 1: a social connection with another human being that that cares
5:24
Speaker 1: for that little little baby. Um. And that's it almost
5:28
Speaker 1: sounds like on the surface like well, wait, what's the
5:30
Speaker 1: big difference. The differences is the purpose of the bond
5:34
Speaker 1: is emotional, and behaviorism says the purpose of the bond
5:37
Speaker 1: is strictly to manipulate the person to get food. Right,
5:41
Speaker 1: So there is an enormous amount of difference. And they
5:43
Speaker 1: came up at around the same time, and it turned
5:46
Speaker 1: out that attachment theory basically completely supplanted behaviorism, as we'll see. Yeah,
5:52
Speaker 1: I think what's interesting is that, uh, at least in
5:56
Speaker 1: our case, Like right when my daughter was born, she
5:59
Speaker 1: comes out, they're like get in there in that other
6:02
Speaker 1: room and take your shirt off, like mom and dad,
6:06
Speaker 1: and like start putting that skin on skin. They call
6:09
Speaker 1: it skin on skin. Yeah, and that skin on skin contact,
6:12
Speaker 1: they say, is just you know, do it as much
6:14
Speaker 1: as you can, as often as you can, uh, from
6:18
Speaker 1: from the get go, which I guess is part of
6:22
Speaker 1: attachment theory, even though that's a physical bond. I don't know,
6:27
Speaker 1: I really don't know. It didn't come up, so I
6:30
Speaker 1: it's got to have something to do with it. But
6:32
Speaker 1: I didn't see anything like where that skin on skin
6:35
Speaker 1: contact is an important part of attachment. Yeah, I'm kind
6:38
Speaker 1: of curious. I'm meant to look into that. But it's
6:40
Speaker 1: one thing that that's it's a big deal now, you know,
6:43
Speaker 1: whereas in the old days they were like, you know,
6:45
Speaker 1: dad's down the street, you know, in a bar, and
6:49
Speaker 1: eventually you'll meet your child. Yeah, exactly. And that also
6:54
Speaker 1: explains I realized now why you started wearing wide mesh
6:57
Speaker 1: crop top shirts all the time. Just that skin on
7:01
Speaker 1: skin context. Skin to win is our motto. So the
7:05
Speaker 1: upshot of attachment theories, that's everybody that you're a primary
7:09
Speaker 1: caregiver and if you make yourself available, if you're responsive
7:13
Speaker 1: to an infant's needs to be soothed when they're scared,
7:18
Speaker 1: to be fed when they're hungry, to be hut like cuddled,
7:22
Speaker 1: that give them that skin on skin contact. Then the
7:25
Speaker 1: infant learns that they can depend on that, and that
7:29
Speaker 1: gives them a sense of security that in a few
7:32
Speaker 1: years they can use to go explore the rest of
7:35
Speaker 1: the world knowing they have a safe home base. That's
7:38
Speaker 1: attachment theory, and that's not If you don't do that exactly,
7:43
Speaker 1: then it has all sorts of other effects that make
7:46
Speaker 1: the kid not secure from that that time on. Yeah,
7:50
Speaker 1: and you know, a lot of this may seem like
7:52
Speaker 1: uh no dub type of stuff now because we're way
7:55
Speaker 1: more um just sort of in tune with that kind
7:58
Speaker 1: of thing now, in a little more touchy feeling now,
8:00
Speaker 1: So it seems very obvious I think these days. But
8:04
Speaker 1: as you'll see, and a lot of this has to
8:06
Speaker 1: do with how you react, um like when the child
8:10
Speaker 1: may be upset. It wasn't always that way. I mean,
8:13
Speaker 1: we'll you know, we'll touch on it later, but there
8:16
Speaker 1: up until semi recently, there were times where it was like, no,
8:19
Speaker 1: if your child is upset, you know, uh, try and
8:22
Speaker 1: get them to not be upset in any way you can.
8:25
Speaker 1: Maybe that's a punishment, maybe you ignore it. And that
8:28
Speaker 1: was sort of the way, and it's just it's crazy
8:31
Speaker 1: to think about such an obvious thing as like, no,
8:34
Speaker 1: you should provide comfort to an upset kid first and
8:38
Speaker 1: foremost and kind of work out from there. Uh, you know,
8:41
Speaker 1: because I'm not saying there's no like behavioral things you
8:43
Speaker 1: need to address, but uh, it's just really interesting that
8:47
Speaker 1: it took that long to arrive what to me. What
8:51
Speaker 1: to me is like a really kind of obvious thing. Yeah.
8:55
Speaker 1: I wonder though, if this is where we finally progress too,
8:59
Speaker 1: or if behaviorism was a diversion from stuff we've been
9:03
Speaker 1: doing before, which probably for a strong resemblance to attachment theory,
9:09
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, like Tuktok may have been a better
9:11
Speaker 1: parent than dad in the nineteen forties. Yeah, and Bob
9:15
Speaker 1: Dobbs or something. Yeah, exactly. So, um, let's talk about
9:20
Speaker 1: the people who who literally changed the world because you
9:22
Speaker 1: really put your finger on something, something sticky and smelly
9:27
Speaker 1: when you said that, Um, it just seems like no, duh, now,
9:31
Speaker 1: like that is how thoroughly it has completely permeated Western society. Um.
9:37
Speaker 1: And and you can point to John Bowlby and Mary
9:40
Speaker 1: Ainsworth is two people who changed the world by by
9:44
Speaker 1: getting attachment theory across and showing like this actually has
9:48
Speaker 1: real legs. Yeah. So Bowlby was a brit Uh. He
9:51
Speaker 1: was a psychiatrist and he was raised he you know,
9:55
Speaker 1: it's pretty clear that he probably had um some kind
9:58
Speaker 1: of money growing up because he was ra is by
10:01
Speaker 1: a host of nanny's uh in England. And uh, it
10:05
Speaker 1: seems like when he got older he was very much
10:07
Speaker 1: into exploring what that meant to him, because he I
10:13
Speaker 1: guess had a memory or at least maybe uncovered some
10:17
Speaker 1: trauma from when he had his main nanny uh split
10:21
Speaker 1: for another job when he was really young. And when
10:24
Speaker 1: you're a little kid, like if if that's your scene
10:27
Speaker 1: growing up, that main nanny, that's like your caregiver. And
10:30
Speaker 1: so it would I would guess be a kin to
10:33
Speaker 1: like mom leaving or something like that. Uh. And this
10:36
Speaker 1: was in like the what like nineteen thirties. So he
10:40
Speaker 1: started exploring that, which was a very I think, kind
10:44
Speaker 1: of forward introspective kind of thing to be thinking about
10:46
Speaker 1: back then. Uh, it doesn't seem like the kind of
10:50
Speaker 1: thing that was innate back then, but he started thinking
10:53
Speaker 1: about his own life and that really informed his his
10:56
Speaker 1: research or his interest in researching it. Yeah, and it
10:59
Speaker 1: makes you wonder if that nanny hadn't left and inspired
11:02
Speaker 1: him to kind of look into the damage that it did.
11:06
Speaker 1: I mean, would we even have attachment theory. It's a
11:08
Speaker 1: it's a big question. May have just had a tougher
11:11
Speaker 1: time because they really it seems worked great in tandem together, right,
11:16
Speaker 1: So um bowlby Uh, he started investigating juvenile delinquents. Um.
11:21
Speaker 1: That was where he started to kind of look for like,
11:25
Speaker 1: if you want to prove a point, go find the
11:27
Speaker 1: extremes and then investigate that, and it's the easiest way
11:30
Speaker 1: to uncover the mechanations of things. So we started looking
11:34
Speaker 1: at juvenile delinquents and basically was like, it's the kids
11:38
Speaker 1: home life that that makes them a delinquent. It's nothing else,
11:42
Speaker 1: Like you can take poverty away, you can take um,
11:45
Speaker 1: you know, rule out all these other factors, and if
11:48
Speaker 1: the home life is stable and supportive, the kids probably
11:51
Speaker 1: not going to be a juvenile delinquent. If it's not,
11:54
Speaker 1: there's a chance the kid will be a juvenile delinquent.
11:56
Speaker 1: So out of the gate, he's already contributing to siety
12:00
Speaker 1: through his research and his theories. Yeah, and I thought
12:03
Speaker 1: it was interesting and that he wasn't necessarily just saying like,
12:07
Speaker 1: good parent, bad parent. He worked at the London Child
12:10
Speaker 1: Guidance Clinic and he was looking and in fact wrote
12:14
Speaker 1: a letter to the British Medical Journal talking about just
12:17
Speaker 1: family separations because of jobs, uh and chiefly world War two.
12:22
Speaker 1: World War two comes along right when he's sort of
12:24
Speaker 1: getting into this, and families all of a sudden are
12:27
Speaker 1: split up, and he hit on a key thing, which
12:30
Speaker 1: is like, hey, that's that's no good to have a
12:34
Speaker 1: parent taken away from a child at an early age.
12:37
Speaker 1: And I don't think he was saying, like, you know,
12:39
Speaker 1: we shouldn't send soldiers to war because uh, their kids
12:42
Speaker 1: are going to be delinquents later, but he was saying
12:44
Speaker 1: this might happen as a result of that. Yeah, and
12:47
Speaker 1: even more than just you know, father's going off to war,
12:51
Speaker 1: like like children were removed from their parents to get
12:54
Speaker 1: them to safer places out in the countryside. Um, if
12:57
Speaker 1: you've ever seen The Lady in Black two, the horror
13:00
Speaker 1: movie that's kind of the premise of it, have yeah
13:05
Speaker 1: a few times. All these little kids are like removed
13:07
Speaker 1: from London where it's very dangerous, but their parents need
13:10
Speaker 1: to stay behind and contribute to the to the war
13:12
Speaker 1: if art working in the factories and yeah, so yeah,
13:15
Speaker 1: of course it's going to have that effect. So he's
13:17
Speaker 1: telling everybody this like, this might not be the best idea,
13:20
Speaker 1: even though the intentions are great. Sorry. And then he
13:23
Speaker 1: moves into the juvenile delinquents. He he had a paper
13:26
Speaker 1: called forty four Juvenile Thieves Their Character and Home Life,
13:31
Speaker 1: And that's when he was like, it's the home life
13:33
Speaker 1: that's that's the problem. Yeah. He took kind of a
13:35
Speaker 1: big swing here because he went all, you know, all
13:38
Speaker 1: the way out on a limb to say like, hey,
13:41
Speaker 1: your kid maybe like a criminal later in life. Uh.
13:44
Speaker 1: And they may be using you know, like stealing material things,
13:50
Speaker 1: maybe a literal substitute or I guess in a little
13:52
Speaker 1: substitute there, I go, a figurative substitute for the fact
13:57
Speaker 1: that they didn't get the love they needed as a kid. Uh.
14:00
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, he I don't think he
14:03
Speaker 1: talked about in this paper. But of course later that
14:06
Speaker 1: could be drug addiction or any sort of bad road
14:11
Speaker 1: you go down. Yeah, And so he followed that up.
14:15
Speaker 1: The World Health Organization, right when the u N starts
14:18
Speaker 1: to be form, basically hired him in nineteen fifty to
14:21
Speaker 1: work on the mental health of homeless children. It is amazing.
14:26
Speaker 1: This guy was a pretty amazing dude, just based on
14:27
Speaker 1: his research right doing this back then, you know, right right,
14:32
Speaker 1: especially when the dominant view was no, these are all
14:34
Speaker 1: little robots, this stuff doesn't matter at all, and he's saying, no,
14:37
Speaker 1: this actually matters a lot. And he came out with
14:40
Speaker 1: a book called Childcare and the Growth of Love. It
14:43
Speaker 1: was basically bait. I know, it's a great title, but
14:46
Speaker 1: it was based on the work and the research that
14:48
Speaker 1: he did for the World Health Organization. But he he
14:52
Speaker 1: very wisely, I get the impression, wrote it for a
14:55
Speaker 1: popular audience and that helped the whole theory gain traction,
14:59
Speaker 1: and the theory he was these juvenile delinquents I've been
15:02
Speaker 1: investigating um that had a bad home life. Well I
15:05
Speaker 1: went and figured out where the whole thing starts, and
15:07
Speaker 1: it starts really early on in infancy, and that it's
15:11
Speaker 1: all about nurturing the child that leads to proper development,
15:15
Speaker 1: and that if you don't nurture the child properly, they're
15:18
Speaker 1: going to be psychologically damaged humans for the rest of
15:21
Speaker 1: their lives. So let's start figuring out how to nurture
15:24
Speaker 1: them properly. Yeah, and I think you kind of hit
15:27
Speaker 1: on it. The key here was it wasn't a scientific paper.
15:30
Speaker 1: This was like, hey, people in the public sphere, let's
15:32
Speaker 1: read this book. Yeah. I think that's a good time
15:36
Speaker 1: for a break. I feel like we could just keep
15:38
Speaker 1: going and just say forget the ads. Sure, let's make
15:42
Speaker 1: it a Christmas special, but maybe we should take a
15:45
Speaker 1: break and then introduce Mary Ainsworth in earnest after that. Huh, agreed? Okay, Chuck,
16:12
Speaker 1: So we're back in It's high time that Mary Ainsworth
16:15
Speaker 1: wrote in on her Palomino and that's a great great
16:21
Speaker 1: reference there. Um, we should say Ed helped us out
16:24
Speaker 1: with this one. And he made a little aside somewhere
16:27
Speaker 1: in this article. I can't remember quite where, but he
16:29
Speaker 1: wanted to point out that he started looking into Mary
16:32
Speaker 1: Ainsworth and expected to find that she was just kind
16:35
Speaker 1: of like the woman working behind the scenes who never
16:38
Speaker 1: really got credit until long after her death. And he
16:41
Speaker 1: said he was very pleasantly surprised to find that Nope,
16:44
Speaker 1: she was viewed as a collaborator of Bowlby's, that they
16:47
Speaker 1: came up with this together, and she was very much
16:49
Speaker 1: lauded within her lifetime like she was she was seen
16:53
Speaker 1: and respected for her work at it, like during the
16:56
Speaker 1: fifties basically, So that's a big deal. I think it's
16:59
Speaker 1: worth mentioning off the bat, absolutely because I feel like
17:02
Speaker 1: we've come up with so many of these stories through
17:05
Speaker 1: the years in research terms, where like the man stamps
17:09
Speaker 1: his name on it and it's like thanks, thanks for
17:11
Speaker 1: the help Mary, exactly, Now go give me some coffee.
17:14
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. No, that isn't what happened. So Mary Ainsworth
17:18
Speaker 1: moves to London. I don't know she did it to
17:20
Speaker 1: specifically work with Bowlby or not, but she ended up
17:23
Speaker 1: working with him pretty quickly, and she brought with her
17:26
Speaker 1: a theory that had been worked out by someone else
17:29
Speaker 1: she'd worked with. I think he was a bit of
17:31
Speaker 1: a mentor to her. His name was William E. Blatts,
17:34
Speaker 1: and Blats came up with something called security theory, which
17:38
Speaker 1: basically says that if if a kid has security early
17:41
Speaker 1: in life that they can trust in their their caregiver,
17:44
Speaker 1: then they have a foundation for exploration later on in life.
17:48
Speaker 1: And as Ed puts it, it seems like it was
17:50
Speaker 1: a bit of a beta version of attachment theory. It's
17:53
Speaker 1: kind of like attachment theory without the explanation of why
17:57
Speaker 1: or how. Yeah, And it turns out that Mary Ainsworth
18:00
Speaker 1: was really good at UM helping to find out the
18:03
Speaker 1: why because she knew, like, hey, we can sit around
18:07
Speaker 1: and have high tea and theorize all day over here
18:10
Speaker 1: in England. And she said, it's very nice. I enjoy
18:12
Speaker 1: the high tea. It's one of the reasons I moved.
18:15
Speaker 1: Those cucumber sandwiches are dealish, Yeah, finky thinky sandwiches are lovely,
18:20
Speaker 1: But like, we need to do, like we need to
18:23
Speaker 1: try and prove this stuff and do experimentation. And one
18:27
Speaker 1: of the experiments, uh, they ended up working together at
18:30
Speaker 1: Johns Hopkins University, and she developed a very famous experiment called,
18:35
Speaker 1: uh Strange, the Strange Situation Capitalist capitals, And it sounds
18:44
Speaker 1: kind of mean, but it's not as mean as it
18:47
Speaker 1: got and you'll find out, you know, later on that uh,
18:51
Speaker 1: this other character comes in that was kind of a
18:53
Speaker 1: human monster with his experiments. But the strange situation was
18:56
Speaker 1: basically a situation where you had a a kid and
19:00
Speaker 1: their caregiver in a room for twenty one minutes, and
19:05
Speaker 1: over those twenty one minutes, there would be a series
19:08
Speaker 1: of comings and goings of the caregiver and a stranger
19:12
Speaker 1: so like, and there was some overlap here and there,
19:14
Speaker 1: so that the caregiver would be there and then a
19:17
Speaker 1: stranger would enter. And then every time one of them
19:20
Speaker 1: would leave, that was labeled as a conspicuous exit. Whatever
19:24
Speaker 1: that means, I am leaving, I guess so. But and
19:28
Speaker 1: it wasn't like the stranger would come in and just
19:30
Speaker 1: sit there with crossed arms like they It says that
19:33
Speaker 1: the stranger would be like geared towards the child's activities
19:38
Speaker 1: or whatever. So I would like to see it in action,
19:42
Speaker 1: to see what they actually did. But um, it was
19:44
Speaker 1: just a series of comings and goings with the goal
19:47
Speaker 1: to basically kind of see what, you know, how the
19:50
Speaker 1: child reacts in what to their mind might look feel
19:54
Speaker 1: like a crisis, and how strongly they respond to everybody,
19:59
Speaker 1: to the caregiver leaving, to the stranger coming in, to
20:03
Speaker 1: perhaps bonding some with the stranger or not, then the
20:06
Speaker 1: stranger leaving, and then if you're mad when the caregiver
20:09
Speaker 1: comes back because they left, or if you were just
20:11
Speaker 1: super relieved. So there's like all kinds of things you
20:14
Speaker 1: can unpack with the capitals, capitals, strange situation, right, But
20:19
Speaker 1: what she found is that there's really just a few
20:23
Speaker 1: buckets that you can put these responses in, which is
20:26
Speaker 1: really something that means you're onto something when you're like, wow,
20:29
Speaker 1: this is crazy. These kids are acting or responding within
20:32
Speaker 1: one of three or four ways. And um even more
20:36
Speaker 1: important or just as important, I should say, she also
20:39
Speaker 1: did some field work in Uganda, UM studying like infant
20:44
Speaker 1: caregiver bonding, and um found that like, these kids respond
20:49
Speaker 1: in the same way as American kids do, UM in
20:53
Speaker 1: these same four buckets. So she was definitely onto something
20:57
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah, and that kind of work game super
21:00
Speaker 1: important as far as uh, you know, because it wasn't
21:04
Speaker 1: just like let's just uh explored that what's happening with
21:08
Speaker 1: these American babies, like if they wanted to find out
21:10
Speaker 1: if it was a cross cultural and then eventually drilling
21:13
Speaker 1: down even more to like socio economic and stuff like that.
21:16
Speaker 1: So all just super valuable stuff for sure. So UM,
21:21
Speaker 1: it's like you said, Bowlby came up with the theories,
21:24
Speaker 1: and Ainsworth figured out how to how to explain why
21:27
Speaker 1: those theories did a pretty good job of explaining bonding
21:31
Speaker 1: and attachment right. Um, So just to kind of like
21:35
Speaker 1: get a little further into behaviorism and what they were
21:38
Speaker 1: up against by by coming up with this completely radical
21:41
Speaker 1: new idea of what makes a good human being. Um,
21:45
Speaker 1: they were up against behaviorism. And one of the most
21:47
Speaker 1: famous behaviorists was BF Skinner, And what B. F. Skinner
21:52
Speaker 1: was working on was operant conditioning, which is you take
21:55
Speaker 1: a behavior and you pair it with a consequence. It
21:58
Speaker 1: can be a reward, it can be a punished meant.
22:00
Speaker 1: But depending on whether you want to encourage that behavior
22:03
Speaker 1: or discourage that behavior, you punish it or you reward it. Right,
22:07
Speaker 1: And that means that that behavior then is learned. That's
22:11
Speaker 1: the basis of behavioralism. That it's that these behaviors are
22:15
Speaker 1: learned traits. Uh. And that's not at all what Bulby
22:19
Speaker 1: and Ainsworth were finding. They came to realize or believe that, um,
22:23
Speaker 1: that bonding and attachment was an innate trait, not a
22:26
Speaker 1: learned trait. Right. So, like if you have affection towards someone,
22:32
Speaker 1: it's not there because you need it, but it is
22:35
Speaker 1: just a stimulus basically to further the caregiving. That's the
22:41
Speaker 1: behaviorist viewpoint. Yeah, and you know, Skinner in a skinner Box,
22:44
Speaker 1: which I feel like we've talked to that about that
22:46
Speaker 1: a bunch of times for sure. But the so like
22:50
Speaker 1: these guys were saying like they they turned this behavioristum
22:53
Speaker 1: explanation for bonding um into like child rearing practices and
22:59
Speaker 1: like wrote book and basically said like, if your baby
23:02
Speaker 1: is crying and you pick that baby up and soThe that,
23:04
Speaker 1: you have just reinforced crying behavior and they're going to
23:08
Speaker 1: cry for the rest of their life. So you should
23:10
Speaker 1: probably never approach a crying baby, just ignore them. Basically, Yeah,
23:17
Speaker 1: they almost treated it as if you were like, uh,
23:20
Speaker 1: that that was equivalent to a child having a tantrum later,
23:24
Speaker 1: you know, and this is just it's not the same thing.
23:27
Speaker 1: There is a behavior's named John B. Watson. I think
23:29
Speaker 1: we've spoken about him before to his name is very familiar,
23:32
Speaker 1: but he wrote a parenting book and um a couple
23:35
Speaker 1: of excerpts from it are as follows. He said that
23:39
Speaker 1: you should never hug or kiss your kid or let
23:42
Speaker 1: them sit on your lap. Get this, you should shake
23:45
Speaker 1: hands with them in the morning. Well I agree with
23:48
Speaker 1: that parton if they if they've done an extraordinary good
23:53
Speaker 1: job at some difficult task, then maybe you can give
23:56
Speaker 1: them a pat on the head and then if you
23:59
Speaker 1: must must, then you can kiss them once on the
24:03
Speaker 1: forehead when they say good night. This was like the
24:06
Speaker 1: the the interaction that they said, if you do this
24:09
Speaker 1: with your kid, you're gonna produce a good kid, not
24:12
Speaker 1: a um a social deviant monster who And frankly, this
24:18
Speaker 1: fully explains the boomer generation because this is about the
24:21
Speaker 1: time that these kids are being born and raised. Yeah,
24:23
Speaker 1: when was his uh when was Watson around the fifties?
24:27
Speaker 1: This is Yeah, I'd be curious to find out what
24:30
Speaker 1: his h if he had children, how that went. They're
24:34
Speaker 1: still like trembling. I'm guessing they just want that pat
24:38
Speaker 1: on the head when they meet somebody. But I mean
24:40
Speaker 1: imagine that people were like, yeah, that's a great idea.
24:43
Speaker 1: I can shake hands with my kid in the morning,
24:45
Speaker 1: and they're gonna turn out to be aces. They're going
24:47
Speaker 1: to be the toast when they get older. Yeah. No
24:50
Speaker 1: good uh yeah nice nice ref that almost slipped by me. Um.
24:55
Speaker 1: Should we talk about the three sort of buckets, which
24:59
Speaker 1: basically clear the three attachment styles? I think we should
25:03
Speaker 1: all right, Well, the first one is uh, well that
25:07
Speaker 1: it turned out that there were four, but um, thankfully,
25:10
Speaker 1: the fourth is is a very small percentage of infants
25:13
Speaker 1: are exposed to this kind of attachment. But the first
25:17
Speaker 1: is secure and that means you know, you're you're doing
25:21
Speaker 1: great as apparent. That means you're nurturing and you respond.
25:25
Speaker 1: And again a lot of this is what to do
25:26
Speaker 1: when your kid is upset. You're responding with um support
25:31
Speaker 1: and by calming them and by nurturing them rather than
25:34
Speaker 1: you know, doing the Watson method. And again, in turn,
25:38
Speaker 1: I know it sounds like we're beating a dead horse,
25:40
Speaker 1: but that will make the child feel secure. They're gonna
25:43
Speaker 1: feel supported. Uh, They're gonna feel like they're able to
25:46
Speaker 1: express negative emotions. And I think that is a semi
25:51
Speaker 1: modern thing. Is is like negative feelings are okay, Like
25:55
Speaker 1: you're not supposed to get your child to quit crying.
25:59
Speaker 1: You're supposed to say, cry it out, feel those feelings
26:02
Speaker 1: and let's like talk about them, um, and then shake
26:05
Speaker 1: hands afterwards, shake hands. They well done. Here's a cucumber sandwich. Uh.
26:11
Speaker 1: And this is called and organized and they're sort of
26:14
Speaker 1: uh further um described as organized or disorganized. This one
26:19
Speaker 1: is organized. And I think what which is a pretty
26:25
Speaker 1: good number of infants apparently are are brought up and
26:28
Speaker 1: nurtured in this way, right. And also to circle it back,
26:32
Speaker 1: Mary Ainsworth is the one who's like, Okay, there's a
26:34
Speaker 1: lot of kids kids who respond in this way, right.
26:39
Speaker 1: And what she's finding is that in that strange situation test,
26:43
Speaker 1: the secure children will be distressed when their parents leaves
26:48
Speaker 1: and then will be relieved when the parent comes back.
26:51
Speaker 1: They will go to the parent for comfort, and then
26:53
Speaker 1: the parent finds it very easy to calm the child down,
26:56
Speaker 1: comfort them, and then the child goes back to playing
26:58
Speaker 1: with the toys like nothing ever happened. It all just
27:01
Speaker 1: rolled off their back. That that is the that forms
27:04
Speaker 1: that secure attachment, right. Um. And like you said, it's
27:07
Speaker 1: organized because the kid knows that they can go to
27:10
Speaker 1: the parent, the parents canna reassure them, and then it's
27:12
Speaker 1: going to be all good. Yeah, there's like a structure
27:14
Speaker 1: there that even an infant can understand. It's so basic exactly. Um.
27:18
Speaker 1: The next one that she found, I think covers about
27:23
Speaker 1: of infants. It's avoidant and this one is where the
27:28
Speaker 1: caregiver just doesn't really give the kid what they need.
27:31
Speaker 1: And we're talking infants here, right, doesn't like the the
27:35
Speaker 1: the infant is in distress, and the caregiver might just
27:37
Speaker 1: like ignore them, They might get annoyed with them. They
27:40
Speaker 1: might kind of mock the kids distress and like little babelo,
27:43
Speaker 1: what's will that will baby? Or you upset kind of thing,
27:47
Speaker 1: which I mean, I can't imagine how many times I've
27:49
Speaker 1: heard that in my life, like in movies, are on TV,
27:51
Speaker 1: and probably even in real life. And when you step
27:53
Speaker 1: back and realize that you're mocking an infant and you're
27:56
Speaker 1: screwing them up as you do it, well, here's how
27:58
Speaker 1: you screw them up right, and um, in the actual
28:02
Speaker 1: strange situation, Um, the kid is totally normal that you
28:07
Speaker 1: can't really distinguish them from the secure kids until the
28:11
Speaker 1: caregiver leaves and the secure kids member they became distressed.
28:14
Speaker 1: The avoidant kids they're actually like, I'm I'm all good,
28:18
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna keep playing with these Lincoln logs, right,
28:22
Speaker 1: although I think it's a little old for infants, but regardless,
28:25
Speaker 1: And then when the caregiver comes back, they either ignore
28:28
Speaker 1: the caregiver or may actually like go away from the
28:31
Speaker 1: caregiver because what they've learned is that their emotions upset
28:35
Speaker 1: the caregiver. So they have to manage their own emotions
28:37
Speaker 1: and they have to hide them. And that is what
28:40
Speaker 1: the you learn as an infant if you have an
28:43
Speaker 1: avoidant attachment. Yeah, like this, this behavior drives my caregiver
28:47
Speaker 1: away from me, so I have to go into my
28:50
Speaker 1: room to be upset or something. It's sort of just
28:53
Speaker 1: occurring to me reading all this. That how much the
28:56
Speaker 1: story of Popeye the Sailor Man, because to play Popeye
29:01
Speaker 1: when he was an infinct then Peppy wasn't around. Uh,
29:05
Speaker 1: there was a lot of like they had a lot
29:08
Speaker 1: of unpacking to do. He and Pappy, I don't remember that.
29:13
Speaker 1: I just remember him beating people up. Yeah. Pappy was
29:16
Speaker 1: Popeye's dad, and he didn't get the love he needed
29:20
Speaker 1: when he was an infink. Uh. And so that's probably
29:24
Speaker 1: why he was violent huh later in life. Yeah, I
29:28
Speaker 1: mean that makes sense. Although if he had been disorganized,
29:32
Speaker 1: it would have made more sense that he was violent. Uh,
29:35
Speaker 1: it was Popeye organized, I guess, I don't know. I
29:39
Speaker 1: mean I would say he's probably disorganized, had a disorganized
29:43
Speaker 1: attachment because that's the one that's associated with violence. Yeah.
29:46
Speaker 1: I think Pappy was cold. So if Pappy was cold,
29:51
Speaker 1: he probably would have developed avoidance, right yeah, if Pappy
29:56
Speaker 1: was um uh inconsistent, Where Pappy was sometimes like oh
30:02
Speaker 1: it's okay, you know, and reassured little infant Popeye and
30:05
Speaker 1: then other times ignored infant Popeye. Infant Popeye would learn
30:10
Speaker 1: that there was no real way to depend on Pappy
30:15
Speaker 1: and no real way to predict when Pappy was going
30:18
Speaker 1: to respond to Popeye's needs. Right yeah. This inconsistency, this
30:22
Speaker 1: is called the resistant bucket. It almost seems that it
30:26
Speaker 1: does as much damage as uh as the other one.
30:32
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, yeah, I mean there, I mean this
30:37
Speaker 1: is something I've learned as apparent that like structure, like
30:40
Speaker 1: kids really really count on that, even though they don't
30:43
Speaker 1: know that they count on that because they don't understand
30:46
Speaker 1: it at that point. But like disrupting uh schedule and
30:50
Speaker 1: disrupting a structure UH is very um like it shouldn't
30:55
Speaker 1: be taken lightly, as apparent, even small things. And Emily
30:58
Speaker 1: and I find ourselves all the time still just being like,
31:00
Speaker 1: oh god, you know, we didn't really think about like um,
31:03
Speaker 1: coming back from them by vacation or or just launching
31:07
Speaker 1: back into school like we're parents. We can or adults,
31:10
Speaker 1: we can kind of zig and zag with life, but
31:13
Speaker 1: you can't always count on a kid to be able
31:15
Speaker 1: to do that. Uh. And I think that's sort of
31:18
Speaker 1: um in a way, that that sort of inconsistency playing out,
31:22
Speaker 1: you know as a kid gets older. Right, Yeah, no, totally.
31:25
Speaker 1: And like in this strange situation UM experiment, these kids
31:29
Speaker 1: were distressed even before the parent left, They were distressed
31:33
Speaker 1: while the parent was gone, and then when the parent
31:35
Speaker 1: came back, they might be angry to the parent, they
31:39
Speaker 1: might be um clingy to the parent. And I saw
31:43
Speaker 1: this explained as these kids develop a preoccupation with their attachment.
31:48
Speaker 1: They're they're not sure when their their caretakers going to
31:51
Speaker 1: respond to him, so they can't focus on anything else
31:53
Speaker 1: but whether or not their caretaker is going to respond
31:56
Speaker 1: to them. And they by being clingy there like trying
31:59
Speaker 1: to force the caregiver to respond. They may cry louder
32:03
Speaker 1: than other kids because they're trying to force the caregiver
32:06
Speaker 1: to respond. And that's the ambivalent or resistant attachment style.
32:10
Speaker 1: And yeah, it is. It is a sad way to
32:12
Speaker 1: screw up a kid. It seems like, Yeah, the final one,
32:15
Speaker 1: which is the smallest bucket is the only one that's
32:18
Speaker 1: labeled is disorganized. Even though resistant is pretty chaotic, it's
32:22
Speaker 1: still organized, like you said, but this is And a
32:26
Speaker 1: lot of times they point out that the caregiver in
32:29
Speaker 1: the disorganized case is UM may have a trauma that
32:33
Speaker 1: they suffered. This is sort of like that cycle that
32:36
Speaker 1: repeats itself. Or they may have like some mental health
32:39
Speaker 1: issue or something and are not UM maybe not able
32:43
Speaker 1: to like concentrate on the needs of the kids so
32:47
Speaker 1: or at least consistently. So it's also inconsistent, just like
32:50
Speaker 1: resistant is. But this feels like inconsistent plus right right,
32:56
Speaker 1: It's it's like, um, you may intimidate the kid to
33:00
Speaker 1: up crying. You may yell at the kid to stop crying.
33:02
Speaker 1: I get the impression with an ambivalent resistant kid, the
33:05
Speaker 1: caretakers not yelling at you, are trying to intimidate you.
33:08
Speaker 1: They're just not responding. In some cases this is like
33:11
Speaker 1: really mean stuff. Or they might be inconsistent in that
33:15
Speaker 1: there they choose to soothe, but they're doing it without
33:19
Speaker 1: any real emotion. They're like, oh, it's okay, you're gonna
33:22
Speaker 1: be fine. It's the right kind of thing. And so
33:24
Speaker 1: that kids not getting any right, and they're not getting support.
33:30
Speaker 1: But not only that, their caregiver, the one person who's
33:35
Speaker 1: supposed to be the source of stability in the entire
33:37
Speaker 1: universe for that kid, is a source of fear. And
33:41
Speaker 1: so in the strange situation experiment, kids who had disorganized attachment,
33:47
Speaker 1: they might go to the stranger just as as frequently
33:50
Speaker 1: as they might go to their parents. When they came back,
33:52
Speaker 1: they might run from their parents. They might freeze and
33:55
Speaker 1: not know which person to go to. They might be
33:57
Speaker 1: confused because their caregiver is a source of fear and
34:00
Speaker 1: they but they still have that need, they just don't
34:03
Speaker 1: know where to get it. It's extremely sad um and
34:06
Speaker 1: it is the kind that seems to really lead to
34:10
Speaker 1: serious problems UM early in life and then on into adulthood.
34:15
Speaker 1: You ever do that thing, uh, you know, you me
34:18
Speaker 1: ever do that thing where you put Momo in the
34:19
Speaker 1: middle of you and you stand for apart and you
34:22
Speaker 1: both start calling her. Yeah, I don't think either one
34:25
Speaker 1: of us could bear to know that we weren't the one.
34:27
Speaker 1: But I know pretty well that she would go to human.
34:30
Speaker 1: She wouldn't be happy about it, but she would go
34:32
Speaker 1: to UM. That's sad Um, I don't know why people
34:35
Speaker 1: would do that, but I've seen that done on the internet.
34:38
Speaker 1: Probably is a joke, Like, surely no one would do
34:42
Speaker 1: that and put any like stock in it. Speaking of
34:45
Speaker 1: a joke, you showed me this. There was this meme recently. Um,
34:50
Speaker 1: although this comes out in a couple of weeks, so
34:52
Speaker 1: this meme will probably be ancient by then. But there's
34:55
Speaker 1: a trend I think on TikTok where kids, um fake
34:59
Speaker 1: re being the news that their parents favorite celebrity has died,
35:03
Speaker 1: and then they they tape it and like, oh man,
35:10
Speaker 1: I can understand being upset about it because it's just
35:12
Speaker 1: like really emotionally abusive. But at the same time, if
35:16
Speaker 1: you watch like a highlight reel of some of the
35:19
Speaker 1: some of the more pronounced responses, it's it's tough not
35:22
Speaker 1: to crack up. I haven't seen any of them. I
35:24
Speaker 1: just solved that some celebrities are like pretty ticked off
35:26
Speaker 1: about it. Why would the celebrities be ticked off? I
35:29
Speaker 1: don't know our celebrities ever ticked off. I don't know
35:32
Speaker 1: celebrities who needs them. Remember that point at the very
35:36
Speaker 1: beginning of the pandemic where we almost got rid of celebrities.
35:41
Speaker 1: Do you remember when everybody was so sick of celebrities?
35:45
Speaker 1: There was that whole gal Goodo screwed up about singing.
35:49
Speaker 1: Imagine Madonna in the bath with Rose Pedal talking about
35:52
Speaker 1: how everybody's equal and everybody was just kind of sick
35:56
Speaker 1: and tired of celebrities right then, and it seemed like
35:58
Speaker 1: we were gonna shed our our fascination with them. It
36:02
Speaker 1: just didn't pan out. Good luck. Yeah, right, all right,
36:05
Speaker 1: we should probably take our second break, uh, and then
36:09
Speaker 1: we'll talk about you know, we mentioned testing these theories,
36:12
Speaker 1: and there's more to it than just the capital est
36:15
Speaker 1: capitalist strange situation. So we'll be back right after this
36:18
Speaker 1: to talk about testing. All right. When it comes to
36:42
Speaker 1: testing these kind of a lot of psychological testing, but
36:47
Speaker 1: especially this, it's pretty tough because in order to get
36:51
Speaker 1: like a robust test, we've talked about it over and over,
36:54
Speaker 1: you need to be able to repeat stuff. You need
36:57
Speaker 1: to be able to have large sample sizes. Uh, and
37:00
Speaker 1: it's really tough in this case because, uh, it's hard
37:04
Speaker 1: to get you know, when you're studying humans like this,
37:06
Speaker 1: and especially this kind of thing where you study infinite attachment,
37:10
Speaker 1: and then you want to know what they're like later
37:12
Speaker 1: in life. This is really long drawn out studies over
37:15
Speaker 1: years and years, even decades, and it's hard to get
37:19
Speaker 1: like a large sample size. So right out of the gate,
37:22
Speaker 1: your longevity is hampered, your sample size is hampered. And
37:26
Speaker 1: then the other big knock is it's really impossible to
37:29
Speaker 1: not uh think about the variables that might come up
37:34
Speaker 1: that would also influence uh the outcomes, which in this case,
37:38
Speaker 1: it's like it's almost an infinite list of variables that
37:42
Speaker 1: could affect uh, these kinds of studies. Yeah, like are
37:47
Speaker 1: you going to screen the study participants for um, you know,
37:51
Speaker 1: genetic traits that you are going to try to control
37:54
Speaker 1: for or whether there's lead paint in their home. Um.
37:58
Speaker 1: There's just so much stuff, And it also is based
38:00
Speaker 1: on how complex humans are, how many influences we have.
38:05
Speaker 1: But the upshot of it is is that attachment theory
38:09
Speaker 1: has been the dominant explanation for UM, how little baby
38:14
Speaker 1: personalities are formed, uh and how we kind of view
38:17
Speaker 1: the world from that point on UM for sixty years now.
38:22
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons why is because it holds up.
38:25
Speaker 1: There's a lot of criticisms of it. It's not perfect,
38:28
Speaker 1: it's not complete, but the gist of it generally holds up. Yeah.
38:33
Speaker 1: And you know, we mentioned mary An's worth doing work
38:36
Speaker 1: in Uganda and UH studying like kind of cross cultural
38:40
Speaker 1: UH lengths and ties, and they did find that it
38:43
Speaker 1: is basically cross cultural UH and as we'll see even
38:46
Speaker 1: within like different animal species as well. But UH, children
38:50
Speaker 1: basically of all cultures do exhibit these attachment theory behaviors.
38:57
Speaker 1: But there were some differences, and I think what the
38:59
Speaker 1: main ones they found, doubt was that their proportions of
39:03
Speaker 1: the attachment styles were different depending on the culture, although
39:07
Speaker 1: they also said that I think they found out later
39:10
Speaker 1: that UM, socio economic differences even outweighed cultural differences, right. Yeah,
39:15
Speaker 1: and I also saw that UM, typically peers are thought
39:19
Speaker 1: to influence the development of a person's personality way more
39:22
Speaker 1: than any other factors. UM. But that's not to say
39:26
Speaker 1: that your attachment doesn't have influences on on the rest
39:29
Speaker 1: of your life, right. UM. The thing that they found, though,
39:32
Speaker 1: one of the things that makes the strange situation tests
39:35
Speaker 1: difficult is that, yes, the responses among infants are universal
39:39
Speaker 1: and fit into those four buckets, but the way that
39:41
Speaker 1: that caregivers soothe infants is is culturally constructed. It's not
39:46
Speaker 1: the same around cultures. So if you're conducting this test
39:49
Speaker 1: in the Czech Republic, you have to figure out how
39:53
Speaker 1: the people in the Czech Republic soothe their kids and
39:55
Speaker 1: then quantify the results based on those different ways of
39:59
Speaker 1: sooth their kids or not. Yeah, Czech Republic. Huh sure.
40:04
Speaker 1: That first thing that came to mind it was I'd
40:07
Speaker 1: like to go to Prague. I try to go to
40:10
Speaker 1: Prague in my backpacking adventure years ago. But our europass,
40:16
Speaker 1: our your rail pass did not cover Prague. Weird at
40:20
Speaker 1: the time. I think it probably does now, but this was, uh,
40:23
Speaker 1: you know, this is in the mid early to mid nineties,
40:26
Speaker 1: so anyway, I didn't go to Prague. Okay, should we
40:29
Speaker 1: talk about the monster. Yeah, a guy named Harry Harlow.
40:34
Speaker 1: We've talked about him before, sure, I know we have.
40:38
Speaker 1: We definitely have it think in a video in a
40:41
Speaker 1: video explainer. But his bastards of science rookie card is
40:46
Speaker 1: worth a lot of money and he is a total bastard.
40:51
Speaker 1: If there's a hell, this guy's in it, there's just
40:53
Speaker 1: no way, shape or form around it. Because his experiments
40:56
Speaker 1: seemed to have gone well beyond the realm of science
40:59
Speaker 1: and into just torture. Yeah. So what he did was
41:02
Speaker 1: worked with monkeys. Uh. And one of the main things
41:06
Speaker 1: he did as far as attachment theory go, is he
41:08
Speaker 1: got to this one experiment he would get to artificial
41:12
Speaker 1: surrogate monkey mommy's there was one that was covered in cloth,
41:16
Speaker 1: and there was one that was just made of like
41:18
Speaker 1: chicken wire, and they were both warned by a light bulb.
41:21
Speaker 1: But again, one is cloth, one is chicken wire. And
41:25
Speaker 1: he would uh, well, he found out that infant monkeys
41:28
Speaker 1: would bond with the cloth mother, no surprise. But if
41:33
Speaker 1: you started having the wire only mother provide milk, infants
41:38
Speaker 1: would go to feed with the wire uh monkey mama,
41:42
Speaker 1: and then cuddle with the cloth monkey mama. Uh. And
41:46
Speaker 1: you you know, you hear that, and you think, like,
41:48
Speaker 1: all right, that that doesn't sound like the worst thing
41:50
Speaker 1: in the world. But what he started doing it just
41:53
Speaker 1: it seems like he got increasingly more disturbing. Uh. He
41:56
Speaker 1: would raise infant monkeys in isolation, uh some times parcels,
42:00
Speaker 1: sometimes complete isolation. Uh. This would you know, basically cause
42:07
Speaker 1: mental illness in these monkeys as they grew older. He
42:10
Speaker 1: would uh some of these monkeys were so messed up
42:14
Speaker 1: that they couldn't do things like mate later in life,
42:17
Speaker 1: and he wanted to to test like intergenerationality of these effects.
42:22
Speaker 1: So what would the messed up monkeys little monkey kids
42:25
Speaker 1: be like? But these monkeys were so messed up the
42:28
Speaker 1: females they couldn't mate. So he invented a contraption which basically, uh,
42:34
Speaker 1: required that the female monkey mate. And I guess that's
42:39
Speaker 1: as deep as we need to go. Yeah. Um. He
42:41
Speaker 1: also had something that he liked to call the Pit
42:43
Speaker 1: of Despair, which was an inverted pyramid. It produced total
42:48
Speaker 1: isolation um, and that the monkeys that were inserted into
42:52
Speaker 1: the Pit of Despair were introduced to it starting at
42:55
Speaker 1: three weeks old. And so like, I mean, we know
42:58
Speaker 1: now what solitary confinement can do on an adult human
43:02
Speaker 1: after a very short time. Imagine being raised from three
43:05
Speaker 1: weeks old in solitary confinement your entire life and it
43:08
Speaker 1: just breaks you mentally, it breaks your spirit, it breaks
43:11
Speaker 1: everything about you. And again, yes, this guy showed with
43:15
Speaker 1: the wire monkey experiment that behaviorism was wrong, that they
43:20
Speaker 1: weren't just after food. They needed a bond, They needed
43:23
Speaker 1: an affection, and that need is so strong they would
43:26
Speaker 1: actually bond with a cloth covered wire monkey. That's where
43:30
Speaker 1: his experiment should have stopped, because beyond that, he's not
43:33
Speaker 1: really contributing much to it, aside from showing that you
43:35
Speaker 1: can really break monkeys by isolating them from a very
43:39
Speaker 1: early age. And even one of his students said later
43:42
Speaker 1: on that it was clear to many people the work
43:45
Speaker 1: was really violating ordinary sensibilities that anybody with respect for life,
43:49
Speaker 1: for people would find this offensive, and he was absolutely
43:52
Speaker 1: right about that. Absolutely. Um. One of the kind of
43:56
Speaker 1: cool things now that we have learned because of attachment
43:59
Speaker 1: theory is again like it gave a real blueprint for
44:05
Speaker 1: how to parent from day one. And uh, you know,
44:09
Speaker 1: behaviorism was the dominant theory before this came along, and
44:12
Speaker 1: it was really just a see change and how we
44:15
Speaker 1: saw child rearing and you know, thank goodness they came along.
44:20
Speaker 1: I guess we should talk a little bit about James Robertson, right. Yeah,
44:24
Speaker 1: I think it's great because this was in terms he
44:27
Speaker 1: you know, it's like this is all great and like
44:30
Speaker 1: as far as like how to parent better and stuff
44:32
Speaker 1: like that, but this was also a time when you know,
44:36
Speaker 1: hospital visitation of course, you know, pre COVID. You know,
44:39
Speaker 1: things are all messed up now because people it was
44:42
Speaker 1: kind of brought back to this place where you couldn't,
44:45
Speaker 1: you know, sort of be with your kid in the
44:47
Speaker 1: hospital if they were sick a lot of times because
44:49
Speaker 1: visitation rules and rites just weren't the same back then. So, uh,
44:54
Speaker 1: James Robertson comes around. He worked with Bulby in the
44:57
Speaker 1: fifties and he started noticing like, hey, this is really
45:02
Speaker 1: messed up that you'll send a a very young child
45:06
Speaker 1: to the hospital and basically tell the parents to wait
45:08
Speaker 1: at the door, and it's super stressful. And he wrote
45:11
Speaker 1: a book, I'm Sorry. He made a documentary short film
45:14
Speaker 1: called A Two year Old Goes to the Hospital and
45:17
Speaker 1: it showed these traumas that like when these and it's
45:20
Speaker 1: already bad enough that these children are being hospitalized, but
45:23
Speaker 1: imagine doing that and saying like, sorry, your parents can't
45:27
Speaker 1: like come and see you except for very specific times
45:30
Speaker 1: of day. Uh. And you know, I guess they're still
45:32
Speaker 1: visiting hours in certain circumstances. But it is not like
45:35
Speaker 1: that anymore, and largely due to the fact of the
45:38
Speaker 1: work of James Robertson. And it's not just hospitals like
45:41
Speaker 1: you think about any refugee crisis or like you know,
45:45
Speaker 1: separation of of families at the border, which is something
45:49
Speaker 1: that has happened in recent years. And you know, this
45:52
Speaker 1: is why people got so upset because like we have
45:55
Speaker 1: undeniable proof of like the damage that that does, and
45:58
Speaker 1: and like what a rama that is for a child
46:02
Speaker 1: and of course also for the parents. So it wasn't
46:04
Speaker 1: just hospital stuff. It's like splitting up families period, right,
46:09
Speaker 1: I mean, like and it does permanent damage too. It
46:11
Speaker 1: seems irrevocable or largely irrevocable. Another way that attachment theory
46:16
Speaker 1: has really affected society is that it's the it's the
46:21
Speaker 1: dominant rationale that forms the basis for how society approaches
46:26
Speaker 1: families that have problems and that their kids involved um
46:31
Speaker 1: and attachment theory basically says it's better to leave a
46:35
Speaker 1: kid in a troubled home and leave the existing attachments
46:40
Speaker 1: intact than to remove the kid. If you can support
46:45
Speaker 1: the troubled home and make it into a better home
46:49
Speaker 1: so that everyone involved has less problems and therefore the
46:52
Speaker 1: relationship between the caregivers and the kid are better. That
46:55
Speaker 1: that's attachment theory, and it kind of it points out like,
47:00
Speaker 1: just what's at steak like attachment theory. If it's not right,
47:04
Speaker 1: then we might be doing something wrong by leaving kids
47:07
Speaker 1: in troubled homes, right, um, like like kids lives are
47:12
Speaker 1: at stake, And then you can extend it even further
47:14
Speaker 1: in that attachment theory is how parents raise kids now,
47:17
Speaker 1: so the effects of attachment theory are going to be
47:20
Speaker 1: felt for generations and generations and generations. So hopefully it
47:24
Speaker 1: is right. It seems like it's right. But if if
47:27
Speaker 1: we come to find like, no, actually it's really harmful,
47:29
Speaker 1: I'll be pretty surprised. But it would be a really
47:32
Speaker 1: big deal because of how pervasive that whole thing is
47:35
Speaker 1: and how many different parts of society it touches. Yeah,
47:38
Speaker 1: for sure. All right, so I guess we should wind
47:41
Speaker 1: it up with just a little bit about adult attachment
47:44
Speaker 1: styles because this is you know, we've been talking about children,
47:46
Speaker 1: of course, because they are the ones that you would
47:49
Speaker 1: most often think of as far as being attached and bonding,
47:52
Speaker 1: but uh, this happens into adulthood and uh. One great
47:57
Speaker 1: example of several is the classic student mentor relationship, and
48:04
Speaker 1: this is sort of the same thing. The whole idea
48:06
Speaker 1: behind a student mentor isn't so different than uh, infant
48:10
Speaker 1: and parent in that the mentor should allow a student
48:14
Speaker 1: like a really safe haven to explore and to discover
48:18
Speaker 1: the possibilities and to study and provide that like secure
48:22
Speaker 1: home base for them. Right. There's also other studies on
48:26
Speaker 1: whether UM attachment might be related to your political orientation. Uh,
48:31
Speaker 1: maybe yes or no. Then there's nothing conclusive religion, whether
48:35
Speaker 1: you're religious or not. There's a little more evidence for that.
48:38
Speaker 1: But the one that really is part of pop culture
48:42
Speaker 1: and seems to have some sort of UM validity to
48:47
Speaker 1: it is how attachment in infancy translates to attachment in
48:53
Speaker 1: adult romantic relationships. That's right, And this is the kind
48:58
Speaker 1: of stuff that uh, if you've had trouble and adult
49:02
Speaker 1: romantic relationships, hopefully you have therapied this out some because
49:07
Speaker 1: nine times out of ten, UM, you can probably dive
49:11
Speaker 1: deep enough to find out, Oh, this has a lot
49:13
Speaker 1: to do with how I was raised, with how I
49:16
Speaker 1: partner up with people Now I hate my mom and dad.
49:20
Speaker 1: It turns out that that can be the revelation a
49:24
Speaker 1: lot of time. Sadly, so they've they've kind of traced
49:27
Speaker 1: like if you're what your attachment style is to what
49:30
Speaker 1: you're likely to be like in a relationship. And UM,
49:33
Speaker 1: one of them, the resistant ambivalent one, the one where
49:36
Speaker 1: you're preoccupied with attachment and you're kind of clingy. That
49:40
Speaker 1: translates oftentimes to a person who is emotionally needy and insecure,
49:46
Speaker 1: maybe jealous, maybe really threatened by anything that might you know,
49:50
Speaker 1: come between them and and the their mate. Um. That
49:54
Speaker 1: that is what it translates to in an adult relationship.
49:57
Speaker 1: And again people are really really comple x. You might
50:00
Speaker 1: check some of those boxes, you might check some other boxes.
50:03
Speaker 1: This is like a general umbrella, but there does seem
50:06
Speaker 1: to be a pretty solid correlation between these. What about
50:11
Speaker 1: um avoidant so avoidant uh? And this is it all
50:16
Speaker 1: kind of makes sense to me. Uh, They they're more
50:18
Speaker 1: likely to value freedom later in life. And then also
50:22
Speaker 1: on the downside, seek out a relationship that might be
50:25
Speaker 1: emotionally distant. Uh. Intimacy maybe a problem and they might
50:29
Speaker 1: reject those kind of relationships, right because they've learned that
50:32
Speaker 1: they can't depend on anybody else, they have to depend
50:34
Speaker 1: on themselves, so they don't feel comfortable in intimate relationships.
50:37
Speaker 1: And then the uh crime de la creme is secure
50:43
Speaker 1: of course, of course, and that means you are way
50:45
Speaker 1: more likely to have a really great relationship romantically later
50:49
Speaker 1: in life, or maybe a series of them if you're lucky,
50:53
Speaker 1: or maybe just one if that's your bag. But the
50:57
Speaker 1: point is, players double through that one. The point is
51:00
Speaker 1: you're more likely to have really good relationships and you
51:02
Speaker 1: and you know, feel safe and secure and provide comfort
51:06
Speaker 1: to your romantic partner and depend on that comfort from them,
51:10
Speaker 1: and be intimate and be open and all the great
51:13
Speaker 1: things that we strive to be. All of your haircuts
51:16
Speaker 1: turn out great, you whistle while your work. Everybody just
51:19
Speaker 1: loves you. That's the secure relationship. I just got a
51:23
Speaker 1: great haircut. What's great? What's great about this though? Is there?
51:27
Speaker 1: It's definitely been shown that you can change your attachment
51:30
Speaker 1: style as an adult. You can change how you interact
51:33
Speaker 1: with your romantic partner as an adult. You're not doomed,
51:37
Speaker 1: you're not trapped like this. This stuff can change, but
51:41
Speaker 1: it takes self reflection and introspection usually, like you said,
51:45
Speaker 1: through the hypotherapy, to to be successful at that. Yep, yes, sir,
51:50
Speaker 1: good stuff, good stuff. You got anything else? I got
51:53
Speaker 1: nothing else. Chuck's got nothing else, I got nothing else.
51:57
Speaker 1: That means it's time for a listener mail. All right,
52:01
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this hot off the presses. This is
52:04
Speaker 1: sinning like twenty minutes ago, flying by the seat of
52:07
Speaker 1: our pants here uh and this is You're not gonna
52:10
Speaker 1: leave this anonymous because I haven't checked back with this person.
52:13
Speaker 1: But this is in reference to the Tarot episode. Guys,
52:17
Speaker 1: what gives is how it starts? I've loved every episode
52:21
Speaker 1: I've listened to, but the terror win was insulting. I
52:24
Speaker 1: think you joked that it is was all made up,
52:28
Speaker 1: and then in all caps, so is everything. Everything is
52:32
Speaker 1: something made up in someone's head. Shakespeare's made up, baseball
52:37
Speaker 1: is made up. Norse mythology is made up. The recipe
52:41
Speaker 1: for jello salad is made up. The only difference between
52:43
Speaker 1: the tero and any other belief is time. Just because
52:46
Speaker 1: it isn't ancient doesn't mean that it's less valid. Less
52:49
Speaker 1: valid way of looking at the world interesting. I just
52:53
Speaker 1: I'm chomping at the bit, chuck uh me. Sitting down
52:57
Speaker 1: with my cards now to reflect on an inner turmoil
53:00
Speaker 1: is no different than someone getting on their knees to
53:03
Speaker 1: pray about a problem. Maybe you should get into that
53:06
Speaker 1: and study Christianity in that same attitude, you would have
53:09
Speaker 1: a revolt. So this person says, I'm not mad, I'm
53:14
Speaker 1: just disappointed. Okay from Anonymous. Huh yeah, I'm a check
53:18
Speaker 1: with this person. They may not want this out there,
53:20
Speaker 1: that's fine. I'm with you. I find it a little
53:23
Speaker 1: flawed as far as their argument codes. Like, people don't
53:26
Speaker 1: sit down with a recipe for jello salad and use
53:28
Speaker 1: that to try to predict their future, reflect on what's
53:31
Speaker 1: going on in their life. The same with baseball. Yeah,
53:34
Speaker 1: you could kind of compare it to religion or something
53:36
Speaker 1: like that, or praying. I agree with that, but I
53:40
Speaker 1: think the fact that it didn't exist and then became
53:43
Speaker 1: extant to make playing card games a little more interesting
53:48
Speaker 1: is kind of a fatal flaw in it. Okay, hold on,
53:51
Speaker 1: I'm taking notes. Salad based baseball not in the same
53:56
Speaker 1: as Tara. Okay, nice, all right at that? On final
54:01
Speaker 1: good thank you and thank you too, Anonymous. Sorry we
54:03
Speaker 1: let you down, But them's the brakes when you're talking
54:06
Speaker 1: about tarot. That's right. Um. If you want to get
54:09
Speaker 1: in touch with this, like Anonymous, did you can? You
54:12
Speaker 1: can send us an email to stuff podcast at iHeart
54:14
Speaker 1: radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
54:20
Speaker 1: of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
54:23
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54:27
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.