An ethological perspective on animal behavior

ERIKSON

An ethological perspective

Erikson and Joan Stevenson-Hinde's "An ethological perspective"

According to Joan Stevenson-Hinde's 1994 study entitled "An ethological perspective," attachment-related behavior is stress-related behavior (such as the crying of a child) that is alleviated when the stressed individual once again retains proximity to another individual, such as a caregiver. Attachment-related behaviors do not directly relate to needs such as food or sex. In other words, the stressed behavior of a hungry customer in a restaurant who is satiated by the food brought by a waiter is not in an attachment-based relationship, unlike the crying child whose suffering is alleviated by a mother. These attachment-based behaviors are not exclusive to the human species, as many other animals manifest attachment-related anxiety.

Within Erikson's theory of development, attachment-related crises form part of his famous 'eight stages' of the human psychological growth cycle. Each stage is characterized by a social conflict the child must resolve to move on to the next stage in a healthy fashion. The first stage (which occurs between birth and age one), that of 'trust vs. mistrust,' is intimately related to the development of attachment-related behavior (Cherry 2012). A child with a competent caregiver that has his or her needs reliably met will learn to trust the world. A child who does not will have 'trust issues' and manifest abnormal separation anxiety or other psychological issues related to fear. The second stage of 'autonomy vs. shame and doubt' (preschool age) also relates to attachment-related behavior as the conflict is related to developing a sense of autonomy (Cherry 2012).

However, within most stages of the lifecycle, the need for some sense of purpose and autonomy must be balanced with the need to live in society and satisfy the expectations of others, even when this conflict is not necessarily at the forefront of the stated motivations of the individual's behavior. During the third stage of 'initiative vs. guilt,' the child begins to assert his or her leadership over social interactions and learns to play with others, for example. During the fourth stage, 'industry vs. inferiority,' a child gains a sense of self-mastery over his or her skills, but does so through the support of teachers and parents. The fifth stage of adolescence called 'identity vs. confusion' involves establishing a secure identity, but through identifying with a peer group (Cherry 2012). Even the sixth, seventh, and eight stages of young adulthood, maturity, and old age requires an evaluation of the self and personal desires for fulfillment in relation to how these desires manifest themselves in the social world.

The fact that the desires and behaviors of the individual are integrated within a social network and stressors can be alleviated by social interactions is one reason why Stevenson-Hinde calls her perspective 'ethological,' because "within ethology, a behavior system reflects a set of alternative behavior patterns with some common causal factors, leading to a particular outcome, which normally decreases the activation of the system in question...no surplus meaning is intended" (Stevenson-Hinde 1994: 63). In a manner similar to Erikson, attachment needs have a biological, psychological, and cultural (social) component, in her view. However, Stevenson-Hinde is more apt to take into consideration the fact that a wider range of behaviors related to attachment may be manifested, based upon competing pressures affecting the individual's state of homeostasis. Biology (such as the vulnerability of the human baby or the hormonal changes of adolescence), affects attachment needs, but there are also personal, psychological issues of the individual's history that affect attachment behaviors (such as a poor early caregiver) and cultural expectations of how much 'neediness' is allowed, based upon the subject's age, gender, and social class. Some of these pressures may conflict with one another, such as the pressure to be social in a group before the child is fully prepared."Outcomes that are biologically functional may not necessarily be conducive to psychological well-being and need not conform to cultural desiderata" (Stevenson-Hinde 1994: 63).