Internal Working Model

Not Limited to Humans

What an animal requires is something like a working model of its environment complemented by a working model of its own behavioral skills and competencies. The type and complexity of an animal’s IWMs depend on and are limited by its motor and sensory equipment (e.g., variations in visual acuity and fine motor control) and the model-building capacity of its brain.

Adequacy

The more adequate an organism’s IWMs, the more accurate the predictions it can make, and the more comprehensive its IWMs, the wider the range of situations across which its predictions are effective, including extension to novel situations. Effective IWM-guided behaviors increase the organism’s likelihood of survival and reproduction.

General Function in Humans

IWMs allow humans to mentally simulate or imagine the probable outcome of intended actions that can range from how to successfully reach a physical destination to attaining social and attachment-relevant goals such as obtaining reassurance or protection from an attachment figure when distressed or afraid.

Appraisals

Emotional assessments of the environment and the self in terms of value (good/bad for me) are an important aspect of IWMs. Value appraisals enable self-monitoring and signal such appraisal to others via facial expressions, postures, and gestures, often inadvertently.

Continuity/Stability

Because IWMs bias perceptions and evaluations, they ensure a degree of continuity in how an individual interprets and interacts with the physical and social world even in the context of some environmental variation. In close relationships, moreover, partners stabilize each other’s IWMs, as each tries to elicit from the other the interactive behavior an individual has come to expect.

Updating

To function adaptively, IWMs require periodic updating in response to change. Developmental changes due to children’s growing motor, language, and social skills generally require only gradual updating (e.g., as children gain more insight into their parents’ feelings and motives, their IWMs and ability to plan become more complex, and parents’ IWMs of their developing children must adjust as well). However, radical IWM updating is called for after severe emotional upheavals (e.g., death of a parent, child, or partner; losing a limb).

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