Types of attachment

• What is the strange situation ?

  A controlled observation developed by Mary Ainsworth to test attachment security between infants and their caregivers. Babies are assessed on their response to playing in an unfamiliar room, being left alone, left with a stranger and being reunited with a caregiver.
• Behaviours used to judge attachment in the strange situation

  • Proximity seeking - secure baby will stay fairly close to caregiver
  • Exploration and secure-base behaviour - secure baby is confident to explore and use caregiver as secure base
  • Stranger anxiety - becoming closely attached when a stranger approaches
  • Separation anxiety - protest at separation form caregiver
  • Response to reunion - secure babies greet caregiver with pleasure and seek comfort on their return
• Strange situation - procedure

  Seven episodes:

  • Baby encouraged to explore (tests exploration and secure base)
  • Stranger enters, talks to caregiver and approaches baby (tests stranger anxiety)
  • Caregiver leaves baby and stranger together (tests stranger and separation anxiety)
  • Caregiver returns and stranger leaves (tests reunion behaviour and exploration/secure-base)
  • Caregiver leaves baby alone (tests separation anxiety)
  • Stranger returns (tests stranger anxiety)
  • Caregiver returns and reunited with baby (tests reunion behaviour)
• Secure attachment (Type B)


  Babies explore happily but regularly go back to caregiver. They usually show moderate separation distress and moderate stranger anxiety and require and accept comfort from caregiver at reunion stage.
• Insecure-avoidant attachment (Type A)


  Babies explore freely but don’t seek proximity or show secure-base behaviour. They show little or no reaction when caregiver leaves and little stranger anxiety and make little effort to make contact when caregiver returns and may even avoid contact.
• Insecure-resistant attachment (Type C)


  Babies seek greater proximity than others and explore less. They show high levels of stranger ans separation distress but resist comfort when reunited with caregiver.
• Evaluation - positive

  • good predictive validity - type B babies have better outcomes than others in childhood and adulthood. Less likely to be involved in bullying and achieve more in school
  • good reliability - good inter-rater reliability, team of trained observers agree on attachment type in 94% of cases, may be due to highly controlled experiment, shows findings are objective
• Evaluation - negative

  • May be due to genetically-influenced anxiety levels that affect attachment behaviour, so we can’t rely completely on Strange Situation
  • Test may be culture-bound - strange situation developed in UK and USA, so only valid for European and American cultures as babies have different experiences in different cultures which affects response to Strange Situation (e.g. Japan - babies displayed type C attachment as separation from mother is very rare)
  • May be a fourth category of attachment, type D (disorganised), a mix of resistant and avoidant behaviours