STA.

TERESA COLLEGE
Bauan, Batangas
COLLEGE DEPARTMENT

Module 16 – Attachment and

Personality
Introduction
.Does the attachment relationship students have with their parents influence
the relationships they have with the teachers or the grades that they earn in school? In
this module, we will learn attachment at length , because it sets the stage for children’s
academic and social success from preschool thorough high school. Also included the
temperament, which combines with attachment to form children’s personalities.

Student Learning Objectives (SLO)

 Discuss the types of attachment and what they can mean for children’s
well-being
 Identify what temperament and personality are and how they influence
students’ success at school
 Give ways on how to promote secure attachment and school bonding and
provide a good fit for the personalities in the classroom

Content
Attachment
 It is a deep, enduring emotional bond between people.
 The most powerful attachments children have are with their parents.
 Parent-child attachment forms the foundation for children’s personality and
emotional well-being in the classroom.
 The mother’s love which a young child needs is so easily provided within a
family, and is so very difficult to provide outside it. (Bowlby, 1952)
 Psychologists believed that children could be attached, such as when they were
clingy and cried at separation. The negative term dependent was commonly used
to refer to attachment.

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COLLEGE DEPARTMENT

 Bowlby argued that attachment was not just a phase of dependency to be

outgrown. He stated that dependence is maximum at birth and diminishes more
or less steadily until maturity is reached, attachment is altogether absent at birth
and is not strongly in evidence until after an infant is past six months.
Bowlby shaped the current view that attachment:
1) Characteristic of the relationship, not the child.
2) Is normal.
3) Is innate with biological underpinnings.
Essential to mental health.
1) It provides a safe haven from danger by keeping children close to an adult
protector.
2) It provides a secure base for moving outward to explore the world.
Attachment behavior is innate and universal, suggesting it is biologically
programmed into children. Adults do not have to teach attachment behaviors;
they simply have to respond to children. All children seek to be attached. In fact,
seeking an attachment figure when frightened is such a strong innate response
that children will even seek an abusive parent.
 Age Trends in Attachment
Children’s attachment behaviors change dramatically with age, but the function of
attachment-feeling secure-continous across the lifespan.
 Early Childhood (Birth to 5 years)
Infants show attachment as they cling to caregivers when frightened or greet
caregivers delight, like kicking excitedly when Daddy smiles at them. As infants
seek their parents, the parent’s attachment to the infant deepens. This separation
distress peaks between 1 and 2 years of age. Typically, between 3 and 4 years
children outgrow separation distress.
 Middle Childhood (6-12 yrs. Old)
Elementary children tolerate greater separation from attachment figures. They
need less physical contact; non physical contact, like a phone call, can make
them feel secure. By 5th or 6th grade, children who frequently seek physical
contact with their attachment figure may be overly anxious.
 Adolescence (13-19 yrs.old)
Adolescents sometimes avoid their parents. Adolescent’s age-appropriate
independence may be the result of feeling secure attachment. That is teens
become independent because they know that their parents will be available to
them despite their behavior. This knowledge is the bedrock of healthy personality
in adolescence.
How healthy attachment develops?
 Individual Diversity in Attachment
It reveals whether the child prefers the parent to the stranger and whether the
child distress’ is soothed by the parent’s return.
 Secure Attachment
A form of attachment characterized by feelings of security, open communication
and mutual delight.

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Bauan, Batangas
COLLEGE DEPARTMENT

 Insecure Avoidant Attachment

Characterized by anxiety, emotional distancing, rejection and anger.
 Insecure-Resistant Attachment
Toddlers with resistant attachment hover near their parent, exploring very little.
They are distressed by separation and difficult to soothe after the parent returns,
they go to their parent but act angry and sulky. They might ask but then arch
away or hit the parent
 Disorganized Attachment
Are strongly conflicted by a desire to be with their parents and to avoid them at
the same time. When their parent returns in the SSP, their stress intensifies and
they behave bizarrely.

PERSONALITY
- Refers to enduring behavior and temperament traits.
- A constellation of traits that distinguishes one person from another.

TEMPERAMENT
- the activity and emotion core of personality.
- Temperament and attachment form the foundation for specific personality traits.

PERSONALITY TRAITS
- Individual differences in the tendency to behave, think, and feel in certain
consistent ways.
- Five traits that account for much of the variation in personality are openness,
conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (OCEAN)

FIVE FACTORS MODEL (FFM) or the BIG FIVE.

1. OPENNESS TO EXPERIENCE – Open people are smart (but may not
necessarily get good grades), creative, and curious. They enjoy exploring new
situations, express themselves well, and get loss in thought and wrapped up in
projects.
2. CONSCIENTIOUSNESS – Conscientiousness people are neat, orderly, and

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reliable. They get things done, do not give up easily, set high standards for
themselves, and think before acting.
3. EXTRAVERSION – Extraverts are energetic, talkative, sensation seeking, and
full of life. They react quickly and show emotions openly.
4. AGREEABLENESS – Agreeable people are thoughtful of others, warm, kind,
helpful, and cooperative. They are liked by others.
5. NEUROTICISM – (Versus emotional stability) Neurotic people are anxious and
insecure. They worry excessively, go to pieces or get sick under stress, and feel
hurt easily.

HIERARCHAL ORGANIZATION OF PERSONALITY

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Bauan, Batangas
COLLEGE DEPARTMENT

THE BIG FIVE PERSONALITY TRAITS AND THEIR CORE TEMPERAMENT TRAITS
- Negative emotionality is the core of neuroticism; activity and lack of inhibition are
the core of extraversion; control is the core of conscientiousness (Rothbart,
2007)
- These five traits do not include all personality dimensions, but they are inclusive
enough to predict important outcomes (Kline, 2001)
- These traits are somewhat independent.
- However, the five traits tend to cluster together to form three personality types in
children – resilient, over controlled and under controlled.

3 PERSONALITY IN CHILDREN

- RESILIENT – A personality type characterized by very high levels of openness

and conscientiousness, above average levels of extraversion and
agreeableness, and very low levels of neuroticism.
- OVERCONTROLLED – A nonresilient personality type characterized by high
agreeableness and neurocism, and particularly low extraversion

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Bauan, Batangas
COLLEGE DEPARTMENT

- UNDERCONTROLLED – A nonresilient personality type characterized by

particularly low agreeableness and conscientious, but also low-average
neuroticism and openness.

INDIVIDUAL DIVERSITY IN PERSONALITY

- Temperament and attachment are considered the foundation of personality.

Given that both temperament and attachment can change across childhood, but
generally do not, you might expect the same for personality. Research confirms
that personality traits and types sometimes change, but not frequently. For
example, in one study, the personality of 8-year-olds predicted their personality at
age 36 in two out of three cases.
- Positive traits and types tend to be more stable than negative.
- Change depends on the environment. If the environment is stable, personality
tends to remain stable. However personality can change, even into old age.

PERSONALITY TYPES BY PERSONALITY TRAITS

Personality Resilient Overcontrolled Undercontrolled

Type

Percentage of 50-70% 10-30% 20-30%

children

Big Five Traits High Openness Low extraversion High Extraversion

High High Low
Conscientiousness Agreeableness agreeableness
Low neuroticism High Neuroticism Low
conscientiousness.

Other Traits Confident, Helpful, obedient, Energetic,

competent, well-liked, quiet, restless, antisocial,

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Bauan, Batangas
COLLEGE DEPARTMENT

verbally fluent, inhibited, impulsive, active,

concentrates well, compliant and cheerful,
reasonable, indecisive. Not indecisive,
compliant, and aggressive, assertive, and
helpful. Not fearful assertive, or unable to
or anxious. competitive. concentrate.

HOW STABLE IS PERSONALITY ACROSS SITUATIONS?

- An individual’s personality can change from situation to situation.
- Personality cannot be situation-dependent because you like specific friends due
to traits, such as extraversion, that they seem to have all the time.
- The conflict between such intuitive beliefs and the research indicating personality
changes across situations is called the personality paradox.
This means that personality is not a simple collection of traits, but rather a series of
‘if . . . Then” scenarios. For example, if a child is threatened by an adult, then he is
aggressive, but if he is approached by a peer who wants to play, then he is not
aggressive. Two children may have the same average level of aggression, but their
“if . . . Then” pattern could be different. Personality is more consistent across
different situations when we know the “if . . . Then” patterns for each child. The
situation dictates the “if” conditions, and the personality dictates the “then”
responses.

WHAT DOES PERSONALITY PREDICT?

Personality traits in childhood have been linked to physical and
mental health, length of life, happiness in marriage, and career success in
adulthood. In particular high conscientiousness and low neuroticism are linked to
better outcomes (Hampson, 2008; Lahey, 2009). Personality is also linked to
academic achievement and social competence in students.

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Bauan, Batangas
COLLEGE DEPARTMENT

ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT

- Personality Traits predicts achievement, regardless of intelligence (Noftle &

Robins, 2007; Zsolnai, 2002)
- Personality types also predict achievement.

SOCIAL COMPETENCE

- Personality Traits predict students’ social competence.

- Personality Types are also related to social competence.

WHAT PREDICTS PERSONALITY?

- Personalities are primarily the result of their temperament and attachment

history. Parent-child attachment may become part of the child’s personality
through the child’s internal working models. Research confirms that
attachment security is related to many personality traits such as curiosity,
persistence, enthusiasm, cheerfulness, sociability, impulsiveness, anger, and
anxiety.
- Personality may also be the result of genes. Research suggests that 20 to
60% of the Big Five personality traits may be heritable, but it varies by traits.

GROUP DIVERSITY IN PERSONALITY

Socio-economic status is linked to personality types. Students with low SES

are more likely to change from resilient to undercontrolled over time, presumably
because risk factors make it difficult to remain resilient.

CROSS-NATIONAL COMPARISONS

- National culture contributes to defferences in personality. Cultures dictate

what attributes are valued and emphasized in childrearing.
- Research comparing dozens of countries, using careful translations, indicates
that the Big Five Personality traits are readily identified across countries and

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Bauan, Batangas
COLLEGE DEPARTMENT

that there are differences.

CLASSROOM IMPLICATIONS OF PERSONALITY

- Like many immigrant children, is developing a dual personality. This is stressful,

particularly when traits from the heritage culture are not valued by the new
culture.

There are two key lessons from the research on personality.

- The personality traits and types of your students can have as large an effect on
their success in your classroom as intelligence or SES.
Personality can change across childhood and across situation.

Guidelines for creating secure attachment and providing a good fit to your students’
temperament.
Learn the “if” triggers our behavior in specific children. If you can reduce each
child’s triggers for misbehavior l, and increase triggers for good behavior , the
best of each child’s personality will come through
Be aware of culturally based differences personality.

Assessment and Evaluation

References
Bergin, Christi Crosby. (2012). Child and Adolescent Development in Your Classroom.
University of Missouri.

Corpuz, Brenda B. et.al.(2018).The Child and Adolescent Learners and Learning

Principles.Lorimar Publishing Inc.:Quezon City

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Bauan, Batangas
COLLEGE DEPARTMENT

Prepared: Checked: Approved:

______________________
_ ______________________ ____________________
Instructor Department Head Dean

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