Ainsworth found that the attachment behaviours could be classified into three types. The strength of the attachment was directly related to how sensitive a mother was to her child’s needs.
65%-70% of the babies were securely attached, where they were distressed when the mother left them and were uncomfortable with the stranger.
10%-12% of the babies were categorised as ‘anxious-resistant’. They showed distress when the mother had left and were insecure in the new room, but showed anger towards the mother and stranger. The care giver was inconsistent and misunderstood the child’s behaviour, leading the child to be hostile towards them.
Care givers of ‘anxious-avoidant’ types (20%-23%) were either disinterested, self centred and rigid or were suffocating. The child behaved indifferently towards the mother and stranger and avoided the mother when she returned. They could be comforted by the stranger. They only showed distress when they were left in the room by themselves.
This showed that the mother’s sensitivity in an essential factor to determine the strength of the child’s attachment. The more sensitive a mother is towards her child’s needs the more secure the child is attached. The less sensitive a mother is, the more insecure her child would be (either anxious-avoidant or anxious-resistant).
The positive criticisms for Ainsworth’s study was said to be an important study in the history of attachment research, and that several more recent studies have shown that parental sensitivity causes attachment security.
The negative criticisms for this research was that it a highly artificial and lacked ecological validity. Also, the attachment type couldn’t happen if it was a fixed characteristic of the child. This is because if the family circumstances changed, then the attachment style would also change. Attachments are a feature to a unique relationship and could be different between a mother and her child, and a father and his child. The final criticism for this study was that it was very unethical for psychologists to deliberately put young babies of the age of one through this much stress. Even though a baby may be left alone or with a stranger, such as a childminder, in real life, it is unethical to do this to babies intentionally.
Another individual difference is cross-cultural variations in attachment (Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg 1988). The aim was to see if there were any patterns in attachment type between and within cultures. This was done by summarising 32 studies done around the world involving eight countries and over 2,000 children. They found that there were more differences within cultures. For example, one of the Japanese studies showed no anxious-avoidant children and many anxious-resistant children, yet another study gave results similar to Ainsworth et al. On the whole, the world-wide studies showed a similar pattern to Ainsworth’s ‘standard’ pattern. This was true to all of the American studies, but there were also variations within the US studies. Overall, securely attached children were most common. Anxious-avoidant were more common in Western European countries and anxious-resistant were more common in Israel and Japan.
The ‘Strange Situation’ may not have been a valid way to measure attachment in different cultures. The idea of independence and exploration are what the outcome of attachments are based on. Western countries value independence, where as cultures such as Japan are collectivists. Also, separation from mothers and arrival from strangers could be distressing and could make the child appear insecure. The methods of how children are brought up in different countries would need to be known in order to have a valid interpretation of the findings.
Therefore the ‘Strange Situation’ can not be used to research attachment types in different cultures. This is because the ‘Strange Situation’ was based on American parents and babies. Behaviour seen as normal in the US could be seen differently in other cultures.
In this way the ‘Strange Situation’ is flawed, as it assumes that behaviour in children of all cultures means the same thing. This kind of judgement could be seen as ethnocentrism, as you can’t judge other cultures in terms of norms and values of your own culture.
