Lesson 7 - Ainsworth’s Strange Situation Flashcards
1
Q
Who created the Strange Situation?
A
Ainsworth and Bell (1970)
2
Q
Ainsworth and Bell (1970)
A
The Strange Situation
- Used 106 middle-class US infants of 9-18 months
- The situation puts infants under mild stress and saw how they reacted to new situations to test stranger anxiety and separation anxiety
- The experiment was split into 7 episodes each aiming to test for a different characteristic:
- Parent sits with infant (use of parent as secure base)
- Stranger enters and talks to parent (stranger anxiety)
- Parent leaves, infant plays, stranger offers comfort if needed (separation anxiety)
- Parent returns, stranger leaves (reunion behaviour)
- Parent leaves infant alone (separation anxiety)
- Stranger enters and offers comfort (stranger anxiety)
- Parent returns and offers comfort (reunion behaviour)
- Observers recorded the actions of the infant every 15 seconds in categories on a 1-7 scale of intensity:
- Proximity and constant seeking behaviour
- Contact maintaining behaviour
- Proximity and interaction avoiding behaviour
- Contact and interaction resisting behaviour
- Search behaviours
3
Q
Findings of the Strange Experiment
A
Secure (Type B) - 66%
Insecure Avoidant (Type A) - 22%
Insecure Resistant (Type C) - 12%
4
Q
Type A attachment
A
Insecure Avoidant attachment
- High willingness to explore
- Low stranger anxiety
- Indifferent to separation
- Avoids contact at reunion
- Tend to avoid contact and intimacy
- Characterised by high levels of anxiety and avoidant behaviour
- Basically doesn’t care that much
5
Q
Type B attachment
A
Secure attachment
- High willingness to explore
- High stranger anxiety
- Can be easily soothed on separation
- Enthusiastic on reunion
- Cooperative with caregiver
- Uses caregiver as a secure base and is able to explore
6
Q
Type C attachment
A
Insecure Resistant attachment
- Low willingness to explore
- High stranger anxiety
- Inconsolable and distressed on separation
- Seeks and rejects caregiver on reunion
- Conflicting feelings on reunion
7
Q
Findings of the Strange Experiment
A
Secure (Type B) - 66%
- High willingness to explore
- High stranger anxiety
- Easy to soothe on separation
- Enthusiastic on reunion
Insecure avoidant - 22%
- High willingness to explore
- Low stranger anxiety
- Indifferent to separation
- Avoids contact on reunion
Insecure resistant - 12%
- Low willingness to explore
- High stranger anxiety
- Distressed and inconsolable on separation
- Seeks but rejects on reunion
8
Q
Weaknesses of the Strange Experiment
A
- Does not account for a 4th type of attachment. Main and Solomon (1986) proposed an insecure disorganised (Type D) attachment. This is characterised by not having a consistent pattern of behaviour. You may not have a coherent strategy for dealing with separation, therefore you may have intense bouts of attachment and avoidance. Van Ijzendoorn et al (1999) supports this, as he found in a meta analysis of 80 studies in the US, 14% had Type D, compared to 9% with Type C, showing it has a significant proportion.
- There are ethical issues, as in episode 6, (left alone with stranger) 20% of infants cried inconsolably. When it was carried out in Japan, the experiment had to be stopped for this reason
- Main and Weston (1981) found that behaviour differs in the Strange Situation depending on which parent is present. Therefore there is low internal validity as we are only measuring one relationship, not a general attachment type
- As the experiment was in a controlled environment, it may not reflect real life behaviour, and the infant and caregiver both may not be acting naturally, therefore there is low ecological validity
- Lacks population validity as it was carried out on white, middle class American mothers and cannot be generalised to collectivist cultures
9
Q
Strengths of the Strange Situation
A
- The results are reliable as they had a high inter-rater reliability between observers (0.94). Bick et al (2012) found agreement on attachment type for 94% of infants in a Strange Situation
- It has real life applications. Cooper et al (2005) devised the ‘Circle of Security’ project which helped caregivers understand their infants better, and it showed a decrease in the number of ‘disordered’ caregivers (60-15%) and an increase in ‘secure’ attachments (32-40%)
