Child Development

TABLE 1

SOURCE: Brady Reynolds.

most likely formed through the infant learning to ex-
pect the caregiver’s responsiveness and dependabili-
ty.

If an infant’s needs are not met consistently, then
one of the insecure attachment patterns is more likely
to develop. These insecure attachment patterns may
lead to later peer and romantic relational problems
in adolescence and early adulthood. Table 2 shows
some adolescent and early-adulthood characteristics
that researchers have found to be related to different
earlier attachment patterns. Table 2 includes only the
first three attachment styles listed in Table 1. Since
the 1990s, researchers have identified the fourth at-
tachment style, insecure-disorganized-disoriented,
and have not studied the outcomes that might be as-
sociated with it.

Some research has revealed a relation between in-
fant temperament and attachment style. Infants clas-
sified as temperamentally difficult—characterized by
irritability, adverse reactions to changes in routine,
and unpredictable endogenous rhythms, like wake/
sleep cycles, are more likely to form one of the inse-
cure attachment styles. This relation between temper-
ament and attachment suggests that temperament
can influence the process of attachment. For instance,
a temperamentally difficult infant is in many ways
more difficult and less satisfying to care for than a

TABLE 2

SOURCE: Brady Reynolds.

more easygoing infant. The increased burden of car-

ing for a difficult infant makes it less likely that the in-

fant’s needs will be met as consistently as those of the

more temperamentally easygoing infant. These rela-

tionship differences between caregivers and tempera-

mentally different infants stand to shape different

attachment patterns.

Becoming increasingly popular in assessing the

relative contributing factors in early personality de-

velopment is the concept of goodness-of-fit between

the developing infant or child and his or her environ-

ment. In the example above of the temperamentally

difficult infant being more likely to form an insecure

attachment, if the particular caregiver is not negative-

ly affected by the difficult behaviors of the infant, then

an insecure attachment is less likely to occur because

of the good fit between the caregiver and infant. The

goodness-of-fit between an infant or child and her en-

vironment is as important in determining develop-

mental outcomes as different developmental factors

(e.g., parental responsiveness, temperament) consid-

ered separately.

Friendship

Another important environmental influence for

personality development is peer friendships. Re-

search suggests that between 6 percent and 11 per-

cent of school-age children have no friends, and there

PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT 301