The evolutionary ecology of attachment organization

Life history theory's principle of allocation suggests that because immature organisms cannot expend reproductive effort, the major trade-off facing juveniles will be the one between survival, on one hand, and growth and development, on the other. As a consequence, infants and children might be...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) N.Y.), 1996-03, Vol.7 (1), p.1-37
Main Author: Chisholm, J S
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attachment
Children
Ecology
Evolutionary Theories
Human evolution
Human nature
Individual Differences
Infants
Life Cycle
Parent Child Relations
Philosophy
Sexual Reproduction
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Life history theory's principle of allocation suggests that because immature organisms cannot expend reproductive effort, the major trade-off facing juveniles will be the one between survival, on one hand, and growth and development, on the other. As a consequence, infants and children might be expected to possess psychobiological mechanisms for optimizing this trade-off. The main argument of this paper is that the attachment process serves this function and that individual differences in attachment organization (secure, insecure, and possibly others) may represent facultative adaptations to conditions of risk and uncertainty that were probably recurrent in the environment of human evolutionary adaptedness.
ISSN:1045-6767
1936-4776
DOI:10.1007/bf02733488