Ainsworth’s Strange Situation

• Ainsworth's Strange Situation


  To observe key attachment behaviours to assess the quality of a baby's attachment to a caregiver
• The behaviours used to judge attachment included:

  • proximity-seeking
  • exploration and secure-base behaviour
  • stranger anxiety
  • separation anxiety
  • response to reunion
• Experiment was carried out in a room with controlled conditions (lab) and a two-way mirror and cameras.
• 3 main types of attachment Ainsworth identified:

  • Secure attachment (type B)
  • Insecure-avoidant attachment (type A)
  • Insecure-resistant attachment (type C)
• Secure Attachment - The child is confident that their mother will be there when they need her, so explores freely but returns quickly if she leaves the room. They are happy to see her on return and comforted by her presence. This type of attachment is associated with positive outcomes later in life such as better social skills and emotional wellbeing.
• Insecure-avoidant attachment - The child ignores or avoids contact with their mother, preferring to explore alone rather than seek proximity. When she returns, they may not show any signs of pleasure at seeing her. This type of attachment is associated with negative outcomes later in life such as poorer relationships and increased risk of depression.
• Insecure-resistant attachment - The child shows high levels of distress when separated from their mother, crying loudly and clinging onto her when reunited. However, this does not necessarily mean they have a strong bond; it could also indicate fear or mistrust towards the stranger who entered the room. This type of attachment is associated with negative outcomes later in life such as low self-esteem and difficulty forming close relationships.
• Secure attachment:

  • babies happily explore but regularly return to caregiver
  • moderate stranger and separation anxiety
  • require comfort from caregiver in the reunion stage
• Insecure-avoidant attachment:

  • explore freely but do not seek proximity/ show secure-base behaviour
  • show little to no separation or stranger anxiety
  • make little effort to make contact when caregiver returns
• Insecure-resistant attachment:

  • seek greater proximity than others/explore less
  • show high levels of separation and stranger anxiety
  • resist comfort when reunited with caregiver
• Strange Situation has good predictive validity as its outcome predicts a number of aspects of the baby’s later development. Babies assessed as securely attached tend to have better outcomes in childhood (e.g. better school achievements and less involvement in bullying) and in adulthood (better mental health). Babies assessed as insecure-resistant attachment tend to have the worst outcomes. This suggests the Strange Situation measures something real and meaningful in a baby’s development.
• The Strange Situation clearly measures something important that is associated with later development. However, not all psychologists believe that something is attachment. Kagan suggested that genetically-influenced anxiety levels could account for the variation in attachment behaviour in the Strange Situation and later development. This means the Stranger Situation may not actually measure attachment.
• The Strange Situation has good reliability. Bick tested inter-rater reliability for the Strange Situation for a team of trained observers and found agreement on attachment type in 94% of cases. This may be due to the controlled conditions or because the behaviours measured involved large movements (e.g. a baby crawling away from their mother). So we can be confident that attachment types assessed by the Strange Situation are not based on subjective judgements.
• However the Strange Situation may not be valid in different cultures. The Strange Situation was developed in Britain and the USA. Babies have different experiences in different cultures and these experiences may affect their responses to the Strange Situation. For example, Japanese babies showed high levels of separation anxiety and were more commonly diagnosed as insecure-resistant, however, this may be due to the fact that mother-baby separation is very rare in Japan. So it is difficult to know what the Strange Situation is measuring when used outside of Western Europe and the USA.