PREVIOUS :  Attachment & Animals, #2

SITE : 4 Attachment Styles, & how they Sabotage Your Work-Life Balance

 

 

Bowlby also defined attachment as a “safety regulation system via behavior targeted at specific individuals…. it is not only related to our behavioral-control system for avoiding the danger of predation, but is also closely related to the feedback system of the neuro-endocrinological system” (<—- interactions between hormones & the brain, mainly how hormones affect behavior).

Infants separated from a parent tend to make characteristic distress noises (crying), to bring the parents back & feel safe again. Dogs do that too, such as the 7-week old puppy heard crying loudly in the woods who had wandered an away from its mother. 

Dogs have been our companions for at least the last 30,000 years, considered ‘Man’s Best Friend’ & have been shaped into hundreds of breeds for many purposes, from the lion-hunting Rhodesian Ridgebacks to the Chinese Crested on the lap of an emperor. 

A Swedish study of 51 female Golden retriever owners investigated if an owner’s adult attachment style (AAS) influences how their dog interacts & gets support from them during challenging events.  NOTE :
a. STRESSOR used to test dogs’ reactions, in relation to type of owner :
🎤 Auditory  (AUD)  //  👁️ Visual  (VIS)
💀 Ghost (G) – one person with a white sheet over them
🚶🏽‍♀️Approaching Person (AP) 

b. Dog POSITION relative to owner – when faced with various stressors :
🚹 Stand next to /  Stand behind
🛜 Lip licking // Reaction to a harsh sound
👁️‍🗨️ Look at owner / Look at threat / Look back & forth

1. More secure people find it easy to trust, to get along with others, & don’t mind depending on others or having others depend on them. 

Dogs belonging to more secure owners —-> during the approach of a potentially threatening person (‘ghost’)
— were less likely to stand behind the owner
— were more oriented to the auditory & visual stressors
— & less oriented to the owner
— looked more at the stressor rather than back & forth between the stressor and the owner ….. which may also reflect those dogs did not need to refer to their owners (for help) when socially challenged

— > Interestingly, this seems to be the opposite in human psychology, which suggests that secure children with a secure parent are better able to shift their attention back-&-forth between threat & safe haven (the attachment figure) than insecure children, to get guidance & protection.

2. People scoring high on the anxiety attachment sub-scale tend to believe it’s important that others like them, worry they won’t measure up to others’ standards, & about the risk of being abandoned. 

Dogs’ attention to humans is affected both by familiarity & by the relationship quality. In this test these dogs of more anxious owners :
— had less lip licking (possibly indicating lower stress) during separation from the owner, & released higher levels of cortisol than dogs of more secure owners.
However, behaviorally it was found that the more active-excitable the dog was the lower the cortisol release.
— were oriented longer toward their owner during the approach of a strange looking person
This is somewhat in line with findings in human psychology.  Insecure / ambivalent children, in a stressful situation, will tend to focus mostly on the safe haven (parent) for protection, comfort, & information about the ambiguous or frightening stimuli.