strange situation

• The strange situation was developed by Mary Ainsworth (1969). The aim was to observe key attachment behaviours as a means of assessing the quality of a child’s attachment to its caregiver.
• Ainsworth's procedure took place in controlled conditions and involved 7 episodes, each lasting 3 minutes, including events like a stranger interacting with the infant and the mother (caregiver) leaving the room and the infant.
• Ainsworth judged attachment for behaviours such as proximity seeking, exploration and secure base, stranger anxiety, separation anxiety, reunion behaviour
• Ainsworth found 3 main types of attachment: secure attachment (type B), insecure-avoidant attachment (type A) and insecure-resistant (type C).
• Secure attachment:

  • Is moderately upset when mum goes
  • A little wary of the stranger
  • Explores happily while keeping an eye on mum (caregiver as a secure base)
  • Is readily comforted by mum when she returns
• Insecure-avoidant attachment:

  • Not bothered when Mum comes back
  • Explores freely without bothering where mum is
  • Not bothered by the appearance of a stranger
  • Is not at all upset when mum goes
  • No separation or stranger anxiety
• Insecure-resistant attachment:

  • Does not explore very much; keeps very near mum
  • Is extremely upset when mum goes
  • Does not like the stranger at all
  • Is cross with mum on return and not easily comforted. (rejects mother on reunion)
  • High separation and stranger anxiety
• Babies assessed as secure typically go on to have better outcomes in school, romantic relationships and friendships in adulthood.
• Insecure-resistant attachment is associated with the worst outcomes including bullying in later childhood (Kokkinos 2007) and adult mental health problems (Ward et al 2006).
• A 4th attachment type was introduced by Main and Solomon (1986) called the insecure-disorganised attachment. They found that a small number of infants displayed disorganised attachment, in which the infants showed no consistent pattern of behaviour and fitted none of the three main attachments
• the strange situation was developed in the USA based on Bowlby’s (an English man’s) theory, the sample including only american families, and so may be culturally biased, therefore the findings cannot be generalised
• Behaviour that is regarded as healthy in the USA may not be regarded as healthy elsewhere in the world