Ainsworth strange situation

• Why did Ainsworth carry out research?

  • Ainsworth wanted to observe key attachment behaviours as a means of assessing the quality of a baby’s attachment to a caregiver.
• Strange situation procedure

  • A controlled observation designed to measure to security of attachment That a baby displays towards a caregiver
  • It takes place in a room with controlled conditions.
  • A 2 way mirror and cameras through which psychologists can observe the baby’s behaviour.
• What behaviours were used to judge attachment in strange situation?

  • Proximity seeking
  • Exploration and secure base behaviour
  • Stranger anxiety
  • Separation anxiety
  • Response to reunion
• Proximity seeking


  Whether or not a child seeks to stay close to a caregiver
• Exploration and secure base behaviour


  How well a child feels confident to explore, using their caregivers as a secure base
• Stranger anxiety


  How to infant displays signs of distress when a stranger approaches
• Separation anxiety


  How the infants reacts when separated from caregiver
• Response to reunion


  An infants reaction when the caregiver returns after a period of separation.
• What behaviours are being tested?

  • Baby encouraged to explore more: Tests exploration and secure base
  • Stranger comes in, talks to caregiver and approaches baby: Stranger anxiety
  • Caregiver leaves baby and stranger together: Separation and stranger anxiety
  • Caregiver returns and stranger leaves: Reunion, exploration, secure base
  • Caregiver leaves baby along: Separation anxiety
  • Stranger returns: Stranger anxiety
  • Caregiver returns and is reunited with baby: Reunion behaviour
• Findings from strange situation study

  • 3 distinct patterns of infant attachment behaviour
  • Insecure avoidant
  • Secure attachment
  • Insecure resistant
• Insecure avoidant attachment

  • Children explore freely and avoid interaction and intimacy with others
  • They do not seek proximity nor show secure base behaviour
  • Show little or no reaction when the caregiver leaves, make little effort with caregiver upon their return
  • Also free to interact with strangers and show little strange anxiety
  • 15% of infant classified as insecure-avoidant
• Secure attachment

  • Have cooperative interactions with their caregivers
  • Tend to explore happily but also regularly go back to caregivers as they are able to treat them as their secure base
  • Show mild distress on separation and with stranger
  • Require and accept comfort from the caregiver in reunion stage
  • 70% of infants classified as secure
• Insecure-resistant attachment

  • Children seek and resist intimacy and social interaction
  • Seek greater proximity than others and explore much less
  • Show extreme stranger and separation anxiety but they also resist the carer when they are reunited with them
  • 15% of infants classified as insecure-resistant
• Conclusions from the strange situation

  • Ainsworth, suggested that the mothers behaviour towards her infant will predict the attachment type (caregiver sensitivity hypothesis)
  • Attachment differences depended upon the sensitivity of the caregiver (how well the caregiver could read her infants feelings and mood)
  • Sensitive caregivers generally had infants who were securely attached
  • Less sensitive and less responsive caregivers had babies who were more insecurely attached.
• Good predictive validity

  • Predicts later development
  • Research has found that babies assessed as secure typically go on to have better outcomes in many areas e.g success at school, romantic relationships, whereas insecure-resistant attachment is associated with bullying in later childhood (Kokkinos)
  • Evidence suggests that attachment types identified by strange situation predicts future relationships.
  • Useful for psychologists as it helps predict the babies development.
• Predictive validity

  Determining how well a certain measure can predict future behaviour
• High inter-rater reliability

  • Bick et al looked at inter-rater reliability in a team of trained strange situation observers and found agreement on attachment type for 94% of tested babies.
  • Shows that different observers who analysed the behaviour of the same children agreed on the type of attachment displayed. This may be as a result of a controlled observation so they were able to identify behavioural categories which made it easy to identify specific behaviours.
  • We can be confident that attachment types assessed by strange situation does not depend on subjective judgements
• Culture bound

  • Takahashi proposed that the test does not work in Japan because Japanese mothers are rarely separated from their babies, so babies display high levels of separation anxiety so most classified as insecure-resistant.
  • Shows strange situation does not have the same meaning in countries outside Western Europe and USA, so there will be cultural differences in childhoods which means children respond differently. Additionally caregivers from different cultures behave differently in the SS.
  • Suggests it is only applicable to Western culture and cannot be generalised
• Lacks ecological validity

  • For example, Ainsworth conducted the study in a controlled environment, not the infants home
  • Shows that environment was unfamiliar to the child so this may not present the attachment type displayed by infants in a more naturalistic setting at home. The anxiety displayed by the infants may be due to an unfamiliar environment.
  • So findings cannot be applied to day-to-day attachment behaviour.