Salter Ainsworth, M.D. & Bell, S.M. (1970). Attachment, Exploration, and Separation — Illustrated by the Behavior of One-year old’s in a Strange Situation.
Arhe Vaninetti
Research Methods and Statistics, PSY 301, Pacific University, Oregon
February 6, 2023
For Mary Ainsworth, a student of John Bowlby, the theory of attachment was not fleshed out enough to be generalizable to infants outside of the insecure realm. Summarized in Ainsworth & Bell’s (1970) article is the idea that attachment stems from ethological and evolutionary viewpoints that suggest that attachment is a mechanism of survival. When successful, attachment promotes exploratory behavior, parent-seeking behavior, and later reassurance in the infant’s sense of self. At the time, Ainsworth had been branching off of Bowlby’s work with insecurely attached children who had experienced neglect, abuse, or inconsistency in receiving care. From this, Ainsworth asked whether or not the categories of attachment were universal or categorical in infants who experienced different levels of care and attentiveness. This article found that among proximity-seeking behaviors, contact-maintaining behaviors, proximity-avoiding behaviors, contact-resisting behavior, and search behaviors (i.e., searching for the parent who participated in the study), infants who exhibited inconsistent or atypical responses to the mother’s return were categorized as insecure-ambivalent or detached. Continue reading “Ainsworth and Bell (1970) Critique: “Attachment, Exploration, and Separation — Illustrated by the Behavior of One-year-olds in a Strange Situation””