Specification: Ainsworth’s ‘Strange Situation’. Types of attachment: secure, insecure-avoidant and insecure-resistant. 

Evaluation of the Strange Situation

One weakness of Ainsworth’s strange situation is that it lacks ecological validity. Ainsworth conducted her observation in a controlled, artificial setting which was unfamiliar to both the parents and the infants. Therefore, the children she was observing may have acted differently to how they would act in a more familiar environment, such as at home. This means that we do not know if the behaviours displayed by children (for example, high separation anxiety) would be the same when the children are not in a novel environment, making Ainsworth’s findings less externally valid.

A methodological weakness of Ainsworth’s strange situation is the type of observation she conducted, which was overt in its design. The parents in Ainsworth’s study knew they were being observed through the one-way mirror and therefore may have displayed demand characteristics. This meant that the mothers may have been overly affectionate towards their children as they believed this is the behaviour that the scenario demanded of them. In turn, this could have altered the children’s behaviour and therefore lowers the internal validity of the experiment.

The strange situation method of assessing attachment type is said to have high reliability. The observations took place under strict and controlled methods (including video recording) using predetermined behavioural categories. Since Ainsworth has several observers watching and coding the same infant behaviours, agreement on attachment classifications could be ensured. Ainsworth et al. (1978) found 94% agreement between observers and when inter-observer/inter-rater reliability is assumed to a high degree the findings are considered more meaningful. 

There is a possibility that Ainsworth’s classification system of attachment types is incomplete. Main and Solomon (1986) conducted subsequent research whereby they analysed several hundred strange situation episodes via videotape and suggest that Ainsworth overlooked a fourth type. It was noted that some infants showed inconsistent patterns of behaviour which they termed Type D: insecure– disorganised. Further support for this claim comes from a meta-analysis of studies from the US conducted by Van Ijzendoorn et al. (1999) which found that 15% of infants were, in fact, classified as Type D.