Ainsworth Strange Situation

• What is Strange situation?

  Is designed to measure the security of attachment a child displays towards a caregiver.
• What did Ainsworth do?

  Used 106 middle-class American infants aged 9-18 months in a controlled observation. Ainsworth observed how infants behaved through a one-way mirror during a set of 8 different scenarios, each lasting 3 minutes.
• What behavior was observed?

  1. separation anxiety
  2. Exploration
  3. Reunion
  4. Stranger anxiety
• What was happening in each stage/episode?

  Stage 1 – Mother and child enter the playroom

  Stage 2 – The child is encouraged to explore

  Stage 3 – Stranger enters and talks briefly to the mum, then attempts to interact with the infant

  Stage 4 – Mothers leaves while the stranger is present

  Stage 5 – Mother enters and the stranger leaves

  Stage 6 – Mothers leaves

  Stage 7 – Stranger returns and interacts with infant

  Stage 8 – Mother returns and interacts with child, stranger leaves
• What was observed in each stage?

  The observers assessed the infant’s willingness to use its mum as a safe base and explore the environment in stages 2 and 5, assessed separation anxiety in stages 4 and 6, assessed reunion response in stages 5 and 8, and assessed stranger anxiety in stages 3,4, and 7.
• What were the findings?

  Infants displayed one of 3 types of attachment
• What is secure? 


  60%-75% display this, there is moderate stranger and separation anxiety, child has secure base, they accept comfort through reunion
• What is insecure Avoidant attachment?

  20-25% Display this. They have little stranger and separation anxiety, they do not require comfort, they explore freely and no base is needed.
• What is insecure Resistance?

  Only 3% display. They have high separation and stranger anxiety. Thye explore less and they require and reject comfort.
• Evaluation - Strength 


  Research has high reliability, it took place under strict and controlled methods, and they used predetermined behavioral categories and recorded videos. This meant multiple observers could observe and there was 94% agreement found between observers.
• What effect does that have?

  It reduces observer bias and therefore strengths validity of findings and increases our confidence that these attachment types are valid observations.
• Evaluation- Strength - Future behaviour

  Babies assessed as secure have the best quality friendships (Kerns 1994). In adulthood describes love experinces as happy, friendly and trusting (Hazan and Shaver 1987)
• What effect does this have?

  This suggests findings have predictive validity and so findings can predict behavior in later life, so since findings are useful, this increases our confidence that the attachment types are a measure of something real as they continue to exist across the lifespan.
• Evaluation - weakness - Main and Soloman (1986)

  They did a subsequent research on strange situation episodes via videotapes and they suggest Ainsworth overlooked a 4th type. Insecure -disorganized: when infants show inconsistent patterns of behavior. Further support comes from a meta-analysis of studies from the US conducted by Van Ijzendoor(1999) which found that 15% of infants classified as type 4.
• What effect does this have?

  It suggests that the Ainsworth classification system is incomplete. This would reduce the validity of the findings. However, it does not suggest the 3 types are incorrect but there is one missing and therefore it's not a major challenge to the validty of findings.
• Evaluation - weakness - culture

  Strange situations were developed in the US and Britain. So its culture culture-bound, only valid for use in certain cultures. One reason may be babies have different experiences in different cultures. E.g in a Japanese study, babies displayed high levels of separation anxiety, but in japan another-baby separation is rare.
• What effect does this have?

  Shows that it has limited uses and is unlikely to be a valid measure of attachment types in different cultures as it does not account for cultural differences in child-rearing practices.