Types of attachment, Ainsworth and cultural variations

• What study did Ainsworth do?

  The strange situation
• The Strange situation is a procedure for assessing the quality of attachment between the infant and the mother developed by Mary Ainsworth et al in 1978
• The strange situation involved a series of episodes where the child is left alone and adults come in and out of the room, lasting 24 minutes in total
• What was the main aim of Ainsworth's study?

  To be able to observe key attachment behaviours as a means of assessing the quality of a baby's attachment to a caregiver
• Who were the participants in the strange situation?

  Caregiver and baby
• The strange situation uses a controlled observation methodology. Explain how this differs from naturalistic observation


  It is designed to measure security of attachment that a baby displays towards a caregiver. It takes place in a room with controlled conditions with a 2-way mirror so researchers can observe. If it was naturalistic the researcher and extraneous variables will impact the internal validity
• Proximity seeking is where a baby with a good quality attachment will stay fairly close to the caregiver
• Ainsworth assessed the quality of attachment on the basis of the child's response to specific episodes of the procedure
• Secure base behaviour is a good attachment that enables a baby to feel confident to explore, using their caregiver as a secure base
• separation anxiety is another sign of becoming attached as the baby will protest at being away from the caregiver
• Reunion behaviour is where babies who are securely attached will greet the caregivers when they return with pleasure and seek comfort
• Stranger anxiety is a sign of being closely attached as the baby will display anxiety when a stranger approaches
• The strange situation procedure involved the child experiencing 8 episodes
• What are the episodes of the strange situation?

  1. The baby is encouraged to explore (testing exploration and secure base)
  2. A stranger comes in, talks to the caregiver and approaches the baby (tests stranger anxiety)
  3. Caregiver leaves the baby and stranger alone together (tests separation and stranger anxiety)
  4. Caregiver returns and stranger leaves (tests reunion behaviour and secure base)
  5. Caregiver leaves baby alone (tests separation anxiety)
  6. Stranger returns (tests stranger anxiety)
  7. Caregiver returns and is reunited with baby (tests reunion behaviour)
• Ainsworth identified 3 different types of attachment
• What percentage of babies in the strange situation expressed secure attachment?

  60%-75%
• What percentage of babies in the strange situation expressed insecure avoidant attachment?

  20%-25%
• What percentage of babies in the strange situation expressed insecure resistant attachment?

  3%
• In secure attachment, when the mothers are present babies explore happily but will regularly go back to the caregiver, so attachment to safe base is strong.
• In secure attachment, when the mother leaves moderate separation distress is shown when the mother leaves
• In secure attachment, moderate stranger anxiety is presented
• In secure attachment, securely and strongly bonded babies will require and accept comfort from caregiver in the reunion stage
• In insecure avoidant attachment, babies will explore freely when the mother is present but they don't seek proximity or show secure-base behaviour
• In insecure avoidant attachment, babies show little or no reaction when the caregiver leaves
• In insecure avoidant attachment, babies show little or no reaction when a stranger enters, showing low levels of stranger anxiety
• In insecure avoidant attachment, babies make little or no effort to make contact when the caregiver returns and may even avoid contact
• In insecure resistant attachment, babies seek greater proximity with their mothers when exploring than others, so they explore less and are clingy
• In insecure resistant attachment, babies show high levels of separation anxiety
• In insecure resistant attachment, babies show high levels of stranger anxiety
• In insecure resistant attachment, babies resist comfort when reunited with caregiver
• Strengths of the strange situation study include good reliability. researchers tested babies at 18 months then retested then at 6 years of age. They found that 100% of secure babies were still classified as secure and 75% of avoidant babies were still under the same classification. This is called test-retest reliability and checks for consistency over time
• The strange situation classification has been hugely influential and has become the accepted methodology worldwide for measuring attachment, this is called PARADIGM
• Limitations of Ainsworth's study is that it can be criticised on the grounds that it identifies only the type of attachment to the mother. The child may have a different type of attachment to the father or grandmother. This means that it lacks validity as its not measuring general attachment style but instead an attachment style specific to the mother.
• Some research has shown that a child may show different attachment behaviours in different situations, this is a limitation of the strange situation
• The strange situation study procedures have been criticised on ethical grounds as the child is put under deliberate stress. In addition the mother could also suffer distress if her child is judged to be insecurely attached as attachment theory suggests that this is a result of early parenting
• The strange situation is a biased study as it only on 100 middle class American families. Therefore its difficult to generalise as the sample is ethnocentric
• The observational study has been criticised for having low ecological validity because the procedure takes place in an artificial setting
• The stranger situation may be "culture bound". This means that the study was developed in the US so it may only be valid for certain cultures. Babies have different experiences in different cultures, for example, in Japan babies showed high levels of separation anxiety and a disproportionate number of babies were classified as insecure-resistant. It suggests anxiety response was due to unusual nature of experience in Japan as mother-baby separation is rare.
• Theory around types of attachment have been shown to predict outcomes for children, this means that the test and types have good "predictive validity". A large body of research has shown babies with secure attachment tend to have better outcomes than others in childhood and adulthood. This includes achievements and less involvement in bullying, they also tend to have better mental health in adulthood. Babies who don't fall into any type or are insecure resistant are predicted to have the worst outcomes. This suggests the strange situation measures something meaningful in a babies development
• Bowlby believed that attachments were innate, therefore the need to form this initial bond should be genetic and as a result experienced by the infants of every culture