Mary Ainsworth

Psychologist · 1913-1999 · Psychology, stage 3: Meet the psychologists

Turned attachment from a theory into a measurement by watching what one-year-olds do when a parent leaves and returns.

Overview

Mary Ainsworth was an American-Canadian developmental psychologist who worked with Bowlby in London and then spent two years observing mother-infant pairs in villages near Kampala, Uganda, followed by a longitudinal study in Baltimore. Those field observations gave her something the theory had lacked: a record of what variation in attachment actually looks like day to day. She then designed the Strange Situation, a twenty-minute laboratory procedure of separations and reunions, and classified infants by what they did when the caregiver came back rather than by how upset they were while she was gone. Secure infants sought contact and settled; avoidant infants ignored the returning parent; anxious-ambivalent infants sought contact and could not be comforted. A disorganised category was added later by Mary Main. The procedure is one of the most reliably reproduced in developmental psychology, though how far these early classifications predict adult relationships is still contested.

Where to start reading

Infancy in Uganda: Infant Care and the Growth of Love 1967
The field study of mother-infant pairs in villages around Kampala that produced the first descriptions of attachment variation outside a clinic.
Patterns of Attachment: A Psychological Study of the Strange Situation 1978
The full report of the procedure and the classification system, written with Mary Blehar, Everett Waters, and Sally Wall.

Part of

Developmental psychology

Sources

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