The Strange Situation

Question 1

Describe Ainsworth’s strange situation

Answer 1

The strange situation is a controlled observation procedure designed to measure the security of attachment a child displays towards a caregiver. It takes place in a lab with a two-way mirror through which psychologists can observe the infant’s behaviour.

The behaviours observed include:

• proximity seeking
• exploration and secure base behaviour
• stranger anxiety
• separation anxiety
• response to reunion

The procedure had seven episodes, each of which lasted 3 minutes. The child was encouraged to explore which tested proximity seeking, exploration and secure base. A stranger came in and tried to interact with the child which tested stranger anxiety. The caregiver left the child and stranger together which tested separation and stranger anxiety. The caregiver returned and the stranger left which tested reunion behaviour, exploration and secure base. The caregiver left the child alone which tested separation anxiety. The stranger returned which tested stranger anxiety. The caregiver returned and was reunited with the child which tested reunion behaviour.

Question 2

What did Ainsworth find from the strange situation experiment?

Answer 2

Ainsworth identified three main types of attachment.

• Secure attachment (type B). These children explore happily but regularly go back to their caregiver (proximity seeking + secure base behaviour). They usually show moderate separation distress and moderate stranger anxiety. Securely attached children require and accept comfort from the caregiver in the reunion stage. About 60 to 75% of British toddlers are classified as secure.
• Insecure avoidant attachment (type A). These children explore freely but do not seek proximity or show secure base behaviour. They show little or no reaction when their caregiver leaves and they make little effort to make contact when caregiver returns. They also show little stranger anxiety. They do not require comfort at the reunion stage. About 20 to 25% of toddlers are classified as insecure avoidant.
• Insecure resistant (type C). These children seek greater proximity than others and so explore less. They show huge stranger and separation distress but they resist comfort when reunited with their carer. Around 3% of British toddlers are classified as insecure-resistant.

Question 3

Evaluate the research from the strange situation

Answer 3

Main and Solomon reanalysed Ainsworth’s data and found that a minority of children do not fall into the Type A,B or C category for attachment type. Instead they may be classified as having a disorganised attachment, displaying a mix of resistant and avoidant behaviours. This opposes the evidence from the strange situations it indicates that the research may need to be revised in order to account for children who are a mixture of types, as a 4th attachment type is not considered by Ainsworth.

Grossman and Grossman found that German infants, when assessed using the strange situation, tended to be classified as insecurely rather than securely attached. This finding may be due to differences in childrearing practices among different cultures. As German culture involves keeping some interpersonal distance between parents and children in order to increase independence. This is a limitation of the strange situation as it shows it is not appropriate for all cultures as it is culture bound which makes it difficult to generalise and questions the extent of its external validity.

Bick et al looked at the inter-rater reliability with a team of trained SS observers and found agreement on attachment type for 94% of the tested babies. This indicates research from the strange situation has high inter-rater reliability so we can be confident that results are reliable. This indicates it has high internal validity as the observations from the experiment are objective.

The Circle of Security project teaches caregivers to better understand their infant’s signals of distress and to increase their understanding of anxiety. The project showed a decrease in the number of caregivers classified as disordered (from 60% to 15%) and an increase in securely attached infants (from 32% to 40%). This shows results from the strange situation has helped parents to better understand their children so they can build a stronger parent-child relationship. This also indicates that the strange situation has high external validity as it can been applied to the real world.