Outline and Evaluate research into the effects of deprivation Essay

Deprivation refers the disruption of attachment that has already been made. Bowlby has conducted a case study of little John whose mother was admitted to the hospital and he showed effect of short term deprivation. He found that he had gone through 3 stages which he called the PDD sequence (Protest, Despair and Detachment). At first when he was separated from his mother, he showed signs of protest and he was crying, shouting and shows signs of desperate attempts to get his mother to return. But after a period of time, he appeared to be calmer but showed signs of depression, these include refusing to eat and play. At last, he rejected his mother at reunion although he looked okay on the surface. Criticism for the study is that it is a case study of an individual, so it cannot be generalized to the public. Bowlbly has also conducted a study on 44 juvenile thieves. He interviewed 44 male teenage criminal who displayed affectionless psychopathy to check if they have experienced early separation in the first 2 years of age. He has found that 12 out of 14 affectionless psychopaths had experienced prolonged separation from mothers in the first 2 years. And 5 out of 30 who were not affectionless psychopaths had experienced deprivation. So he had jumped to the conclusion that deprivation before the age of two will lead to affection psycopathy and this supports his idea of critical period. However, his assumption is too big as he was trying to draw a cause and effect. He had not manipulated the variables and this is only a correlation study. Also, he has not taken into the account of what had happened during the period between 2 years old and teenage years. The boys may have other experiences e.g. joined a gang and that had lead them into being affectionless psychopaths. Also, the sample size is small and he has only used male participants in his study, so the sample is not representative and this study cannot be generalized. Bowlby wanted to use this study to proof his theory and he used an interview approach in this study. He might have asked leading question and lead the participants into answering the answers that he wanted. So this study may not be truthful. And this research is retrospective, which he had the participants to talk about their past, and memory could be distorted and may not give accurate answer. Moreover, there may be potential self-serving bias in the teenage boys as they may want to make excuses for their behaviour, so they may blame the situation and make themselves to appear in good light. Furthermore, Bowlby has suggested a maternal deprivation hypothesis. He proposed that a child needs continuous presence of a primary care giver in the first 1.5 to 2 years of age. Or else they will suffer from long term effects of deprivation, these include mental retardation, depression, affectionless psychopathy, etc. However, Rutters study on privated Romanian orphans has suggested effects of privation can be overcome as it was shown that there wasn’t long term damaging effects in the orphans after they have been adopted to a loving home.