SS Flashcards
(3 cards)
Culture-bound test
The strange situation was created and tested in the USA, which means
it may be culturally biased (ethnocentric), as it will reflect the norms and values of American
culture. Cultural differences in childhood experiences are likely to mean that children and their
caregivers respond differently to the strange situation. For example, Takahashi (1990) noted that the strange situation did not work in Japan, as Japanese mothers are so rarely separated from their babies that there are very high levels of separation anxiety. At the reunion episode, Japanese mothers rushed to the babies and scooped them up, meaning the child’s response
was hard to observe. This suggests the strange situation is an example of imposed etic, Mary Ainsworth assumed that the American based model of classifying attachment was the norm, and so she imposed her own cultural understanding upon the rest of the world.
Predictive Validity
A strength of the strange situation is that not only does it provide a good
measure of attachment that differentiates between the different attachment types; it also strongly predicts later development. Infants assessed as secure typically go on to have better outcomes in many areas, ranging from success at school to romantic relationships and
friendships in adulthood. Insecure-resistant attachment is associated with the worst outcome including bullying in later childhood (Myron-Wilson and Smith, 1998) and adult mental health problems (Ward et al. 2006). This supports the predictive validity of the strange situation as
a useful tool to identify early types of attachment and predict adult relationships
Reliable
The strange situation shows very good inter-rater reliability. In other words, different observers watching the same children in the strange situation generally agree on
what attachment type to classify them with. This may be because the strange situation takes place under controlled conditions using standardised procedures and because the behavioural categories are easy to observe. In a recent study, Bick et al. (2012) looked at
inter-rater reliability in a team of trained strange situation observers and found agreement on attachment type for 94% of tested infants. This means we can be confident that the attachment type of an infant identified in the strange situation does not just depend on who is observing them
