Insecure Attachment and Today’s Politics

You know attachment theory, right? Research findings with young children and with adults show that it matters what kind of attachment in babyhood you develop with your primary caregiver (usually the mother). It matters for your health, your ability to manage social relations, and your worldview, including politics (more below).

The baby’s brain organizes itself around the experiences in the early months of life, which is also when a person’s attachment style, rooted in neurobiology, is set up.

Why do the early months of care have such a big impact? Recall that full-term babies (at least 40 weeks in the womb) are born with 25% of adult brain volume and rapidly grow neuronal connections in the first days, months and years, based on how the quality of nurture experienced. Lack of responsive care (neglect) is associated with smaller brains and fewer overall capacities.

Secure attachment is representative of a brain’s neurobiology that develops enough emotional, social and logical intelligence to survive in the modern industrialized-capitalistic world. (In the view of the nested pathway, it does not represent humanity’s optimal development, which would include greater attunement to others, including receptive intelligence of the natural world.)

Insecure attachment emerges from an early life of undernurturing of one kind or another.

Insecure attachment of the emotional-avoidance style means that emotions were not respected in babyhood. They were not fostered reliably in the caregiver-child relational experience. Emotional and social intelligences were underdeveloped because they were not were not valued and thus not experienced sufficiently. But an intellectual focus was valued. The child was rewarded for intellectual achievement.

Insecure attachment of the anxious style means that emotions had to be used to get needs met. The child learned to manipulate others with emotional drama. The caregivers may have also modeled this but the child’s needs were met when extreme emotions were expressed. Words were unreliable and did not match experience, and so logic and rational thought become underdeveloped.

Both forms of insecure attachment show deficits in perspective taking.

At its worst, avoidant attachment uses mental modeling to such an extent that it is not based in reality. Reliant on left-brain-directed ego-consciousness (because of underdeveloped right hemisphere in early life), it can be uninformed by holistic live experience. Actions fit an emotionally-detached ethic. These are the kinds of ethics often taught in professional schools.

Anxious attachment uses a “logic” that is twisted around deep instability and need for a lifesaver. It emerges from a threat-reactive brain. It can latch onto beliefs that are soothing (e.g., superiority of my group) and take actions to manipulate others, what I call a vicious ethic, for temporary relief.

Insecure attachment comes from unnestedness experiences at critical times periods when social worldview and sense of existential safety (or threat) are formed.

Sylvan Tomkins identified two orientations to life that he postulated develop from childhood experience. The humanistic orientation focuses on self-expression and supportive relationships, understanding humans to be basically good. Geoge Lakoff suggested that liberals orient to a “nurturing parent” metaphor in politics. In our work, this orientation is associated with secure attachment and a preference for egalitarian social engagement ethics.

The normative orientation focuses on external standards and the denial of self-expression, understanding humans to be basically evil, in need of punishment. George Lakoff suggested that conservatives orient to the metaphor of the strict father. In our work, the normative orientation is associated with insecure attachment and a preference for dominance-submission ethics. My last post discussed critical periods related to this outcome.

Consider the two main political parties in the USA these days. The Democratic Party uses logic and rationality to form plans and policies to advance the country’s wellbeing. It uses reasonable institutional ways of moving things along. The Democratic Party, focused on logical governance, is not good at rousing the emotions of the populace. It seems very detached from every day concerns.

Today’s Republican Party leaders and happy followers use emotion to garner support. They do not stick to logic or truth telling but seek to grab attention, even as a distraction from action. Like novices, some in federal governance think they can govern well enough from passion and loyal obedience. Who needs experience? But without the expertise, they are bumbling about and can do a lot of damage to people and institutions. The Republican Party, focused on power and dominance, is not good at logical governance. Following impulsive decision making and narcissistic governance, many are led away from wellbeing.

Insecure attachment has been rising in the USA since it started to be measured in the 1960s. Too many babies are not getting the ongoing companionship care needed for healthy development, including attachment. This decline in baby care been going on for the last 100 years or more, leading to generations of insecure attachment that, without healing, gets passed on to the next generation.

Species-normal human nature is raised with deep nestedness, fostering secure attachment (to Nature as well) and an orientation to holistic cooperation. Awareness that everything is interconnected, impacting the wellbeing of All, guides behavior as a matter of course.

Returning to the nested pathway is an imperative for any long term human future.

For paid subscribers, I’ll be posting a recording discussing cultural beliefs, attachment and morality.

REFERENCES

Lakoff, G. (2002). Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Narvaez, D. (2014). Neurobiology and the development of human morality: Evolution, culture and wisdom. Norton.

Narvaez, D. (2016). Embodied morality: Protectionism, engagement and imagination. Palgrave-Macmillan.

Narvaez, D. (2024). Returning to evolved nestedness, wellbeing, and mature human nature, an ecological imperative. Review of General Psychology, 28(2), 83-105. https://doi.org/10.1177/1089268023122403 (text at ResearchGate)

Sroufe, L.A., Egeland, B, Carlson, E.A., & Collins, W.A. (2005). The development of the person: The Minnesota study of risk and adaptation from birth to adulthood. New York: Guilford.

Tomkins, S. (1965). Affect and the psychology of knowledge. In S.S. Tomkins & C.E. Izard (Eds.), Affect, cognition, and personality. New York: Springer.

Tomkins, S. (1965). The psychology of being right-and left. Trans-action, 3(1), 23-27.