Ainsworth’s strange situation

Ainsworth’s types of attachment: Type A

• Insecure Avoidant (Type A)- Infants keep a distance from their mother, not using her a secure base but exploring freely

• The infant displays low stranger anxiety and if their mothers leave the room,, they display low separation anxiety

• When she returns they are indifferent, not attempting to get comfort from her

• Their Mothers seem to show little sensitive responsiveness to their infant needs

What is sensitive responsiveness?

A caregiver’s ability to perceive, interpret and respond promptly and appropriately to a child’s verbal and nonverbal signals and emotional states

Ainsworth’s types of attachment: Type B

• Secure-(Type B):Infants use their mother as a secure base as they explore their environment

• They show a moderate level of stranger anxiety and a moderate level of separation anxiety

• A happy reunion response allows them to settle quickly back to explorattion

• Caregivers show sensitive respnsiveness

Ainsworth’s types of attachment: Type C

• Insecure resistant-(Type C): Infants do not explore the environment and are clingy, seeking closeness to mum

• They have high separation and stranger anxiety

• When their mothers return, the infants appear ambivalent, with mixed emotions, seeming to both crave and reject er attention

• Mothers appear to be inconsistent with their sensitive responsiveness

Types of attachment: Type D

• Main and Solomon (1986)

• Created due to the fact that some infants didn’t fit into any of the original 3 categories

• Inconsistent or contradictory behaviours- May approach the caregiver but with their head turned away

• May show freezing, confusion or fear towards the caregiver

• Sometimes a mixture of resistant and avoidant behaviours

• Often linked to abuse, neglect or frightening caregiving environments

• The caregiver is both a source of comfort and fear

Ainsworth’s strange situation

• Ainsworth (1970-73)

• 106 infants (48–57 weeks) and mother pairs participated

• Conducted in a controlled lab setting with toys

• Each stage was 3 minutes

• Two observers were behind a one-way mirror and recorded infants’ responses at each stage

• They assessed proximity to mother, willingness to explore, use of their mother as a secure base, stranger anxiety, separation anxiety, reunion response and the sensitive responsiveness of the mother to the infant’s needs

Evaluation of the strange situation✅

• High internal validity

• Highly controlled- lab experiment

• Easily replicable

• Reliable results- inter-rater reliability

• Supports Bowlby’s theory of secure bases

• Predictive validity- children classified as securely attached tend to have better social, emotional and academic outcomes in later childhood and adulthood

Evaluation of the strange situation❌

• Ethnocentric sample- in collectivist cultures, behaviours mean different things egg: Japan- infants rarely separate from mothers, separation causes extreme distress- looks like resistant attachment but may not be insecurity Germany-(Individual) more avoidant due to independence training, not necessarily secure

• Developed in one culture- imposed Etic

• Lack of ecological and external validity-Could be agued to be highly artificial due to the controlled metholodogy

• Overt observation, mother may show more demand characteristics and show more sensitive responsiveness

• Incomplete classification- disorganised type

Van Ijzendoorn

• 1988

• Investigated if whether Ainsworth’s attachment types are found across cultures and whether there are differences between or within cultures

Cultural variations in attachment

• Van ijzendoorn (1988)

• Conducted a large scale meta-analysis of 2000 infants in 32 studies from 8 countries

• Each study classified attachment types from the strange situation

• Found that secure was the most common type in all countries

• Insecure resistant was the least common

• Avoidant was more common in individualistic Western cultures

• Resistant was more common in collectivist non western cultures

• Germany had the most insecure-avoidant infants (35%)

• Japan had the most insecure resistant (27%)

• China had the least secure infants (50%)

• The UK had 22% avoidant, 75% secure and 3% resistant

Conclusions of Van Ijzendoorn’s research

• Secure was the most common type in all countries

• This suggests there us a globally preferred attachment style which potentially haas a biological bias

• However there are variations that parenting styles could explain

• German families encourage independent/non clingy behaviour resulting in more infants that show little distress and therefore more classed as avoidant

• Japanese mothers spend significant time with their infants which would result in high separation anxiety which would explain more being classified as resistant

Evaluation of Ijzendoorn’s research✅

• As the dominant attachment style was secure for all countries studies, this may be evidence for Bowlby’s theory that there is a biological, instinctive dive to parent in a way that produces secure attachments

• The meta-analysis had a very large sample; poorly conducted studies or unusual results would only have a small effect on overall results

• Good reliability- 94% inter-rate reliability

• Results are more generalisable due to being from more than one culture

Evaluation of Van Ijzendoorn’s research

• Ainsworth an Van’s may both lack temporal validity due to the changing nature of family life and parenting styles in the modern world- there may be a lower percentage of secure and higher percentage of avoidant infants due to infants having to adjust to the demands of modern life- eg: a more absent mother due to having a career

• Many countries represented only had one study included- not representative of the population