3.4 Ainsworth’s ‘Strange Situation’

• The strange situation


  The accepted observational testing Method for measuring attachment types
• Cultural Variations


  Differences in child-rearing practices and attachment types between different cultural groupings
• Cross-cultural studies


  Comparison of findings from people of different cultures
• Imposed etic 


  Using techniques that are only relevant to one culture to study and/or draw conclusions about another
• the 3 different attachment types are…

  Type A: insecure - avoidant (I don’t care)

  Type B: securely attached (I trust you)

  Type C: insecure - resistant (I don’t trust you)
• When was Ainsworth’s original study?

  Ainsworth (1978)
• What were the findings of Ainsworth’s study?


  Type A: insecure - avoidant (15%)

  Type B: securely attached (70%)

  Type C: insecure - resistant (15%)
• What are the strengths of Ainsworth’s study?

  • repeated Consistently -> reliable
  • also measures parental sensitivity (sensitive responsiveness)
  • Inter-rater reliability
• What are the weaknesses of Ainsworth’s study?

  • Lacks ecological validity
  • ignores the role of the mother
  • unethical
  • ethnocentric
• The seven stages of Ainsworth’s Study:

  1. Infant is encourages to explore
  2. stranger enters and interacts with the infant
  3. mother leaves and stranger stays
  4. mother returns and stranger leaves
  5. mother leaves and infant is left alone
  6. instead of mother, stranger returns
  7. mother re-enters
• Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg’s Research looked at attachment types


  1. Within (intra) different cultures

  2. Across (inter) different cultures
• Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg’s Meta-analysis (1988)


  Looked at the results of the strange situation across 32 studies in 8 different countries, infants below the age of 2 years
• The most common (modal) attachment type was type B (secure) overall 67% of infants are Type B
• In Germany there was the highest proportion of Type A attachments (avoidant) at 35% compared to other cultures
• In Japan there was the high proportion of Type C attachments (resistant) at 27% and even higher in Israel (29%)