The Strange Situation - Evaluation

• A strength of the strange situation is its seen as being strongly predictive of later development. Babies assessed as secure typically go on to have better outcomes in many areas, ranging from success at school to romantic relationships arid friendships in adulthood. Insecure-resistant attachment is associated with the worst outcomes including bullying in later childhood and adult mental health problems. This is a strength as this this is evidence for the validity of the concept as it can explain subsequent outcomes.
• Another strength of the strange situation is it has good reliability. Different observers watching the same children in the Strange Situation generally agree on what attachment type to classify them with. This may be because the Strange Situation takes place under controlled conditions and because the behavioural categories are easy to observe. This means we can be confident that the attachment type of an infant identified in the Strange Situation does not just depend on who is observing therm.
• A limitation of the Strange Situation is the test may be culture bound. It doesn't have the same meaning in countries outside Western Europe and USA. This is for two reasons-cultural differences in childhood experiences are likely to mean that children respond differently to the Strange Situation. Second, caregivers from different cultures behave differently in the Strange Situation. For example Takahashi (1990) noted the test doesn't really work in Japan because Japanese mothers are rarely separated from their babies so there are very high levels of separation anxiety