Describe and Evaluate Mary Ainsworths Findings in Psychology

Mary Ainsworth - Strange Situation

Bowlby (1969) believed that attachment was an all or nothing process. However, research has shown that there are individual differences in attachment quality. Indeed one of the primary paradigms in attachment theory is that of the security of an individual’s attachment (Ainsworth 1970, 1978).

Much research in psychology has focused on how forms of attachment differ between infants. For example, Schaffer and Emerson (1964) discovered what appeared to be innate differences in sociability in babies; some babies preferred cuddling more than others, from very early on, before much interaction had occurred to cause such differences.

However, it was probably the psychologist Mary Ainsworth (1913 - 1999) who provided the most famous body of research offering explanations of individual differences in attachment.

It’s easy enough to know when you are attached to someone because you know how you feel when you are apart from that person, and, being an adult, you can put your feelings into words and describe how it feels.

However, most attachment research is carried out using infants and young children, so psychologists have to devise subtle ways of researching attachment, using involving the observational method.

Psychologist Mary Ainsworth devised an assessment technique called the Strange Situation Classification (SSC) in order to investigate how attachments might vary between children.

Ainsworth and Bell (1970) observational study of individual differences in attachment is described below.

Strange Situation Procedure

The security of attachment in one- to two-year-olds was investigated by Ainsworth and Bell (1970) in the 'strange situation' study, in order to determine the nature of attachment behaviours and types of attachment.

Ainsworth (1970) developed an experimental procedure in order to observe the variety of attachment forms exhibited between mothers and infants.

The experiment is set up in a small...