Rudolph Schaffer
Rudolph Schaffer, 1926 to 2008, was a developmental psychologist at the University of Strathclyde and first author, with Peggy Emerson, of the 1964 Glasgow study. It is the earliest good test of Bowlby's claim, and it both confirmed the core of it and complicated the part everyone remembers.
Who they are
Schaffer and Emerson followed sixty babies in working-class Glasgow homes, visiting monthly through the first year and again at eighteen months, recording who each baby protested at being separated from and who they sought when uneasy.
The central finding is the one that matters. Babies attached to the adult who responded to them, not the adult who fed them or who was simply present most. That was a direct refutation of the then-dominant view that the bond is learned because the mother supplies food, and it is the empirical foundation for everything the field later built about sensitivity.
The second finding complicated Bowlby. He had argued that one bond stands above the others in a hierarchy. By eighteen months only about one baby in eight was attached to a single person, most had several attachments and some had five or more. Bowlby never claimed other bonds do not exist, so this does not refute him, but the ranking he proposed was not obvious in the data.
The study also produced the stage account still taught in schools: an early indiscriminate phase, specific attachments emerging around seven to nine months, then multiple attachments following quickly.
Two limits belong with it. The data were mothers' own diaries and reports rather than trained observation, so a mother was reporting on her own behaviour and her own bond, with all the pressures that carries. And it is one city, one social class, in 1964, when fathers rarely did routine childcare, so the timetable does not travel.
Key papers
Key papers
Schaffer, H. R., & Emerson, P. E. (1964). Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 29(3, Serial No. 94), 1-77. The Glasgow study: sixty babies in working-class homes, visited monthly through the first year and again at eighteen months. The source of the responsiveness finding, of the multiple-attachment finding, and of the stage account still taught in schools. The data were mothers' own diaries and reports rather than trained observation, which is the study's main limit.
Bowlby, J. (1969/1982). Attachment and Loss, Vol. 1. Basic Books. Not his, and cited here because the Glasgow finding on multiple attachments is read against Bowlby's hierarchy.
Article titles are not recorded in the vault for the monograph entry above and are not supplied here.
Key ideas
Responsiveness, not food. The finding that killed the learned-through-feeding account.
Multiple attachments are normal, which sits awkwardly with a strict hierarchy.
Maternal report is the weak link, and the field moved to observation afterwards for good reason.
Concepts on this site
Sources
- Schaffer, H. R., & Emerson, P. E. (1964). Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 29(3, Serial No. 94), 1-77.
- Bowlby, J. (1969/1982). Attachment and Loss, Vol. 1. Basic Books.