The Strange Situation was a testing procedure created by Mary Ainsworth et al. in 1978 to measure attachment. The objectives of this study were to evaluate how children between 9 and 18 months behave under conditions of mild stress in order to test stranger anxiety, separation anxiety and the concept of a secure base. Ainsworth also assessed individual differences between mother and baby pairs in terms of the quality of their attachments. The sample consisted of 100 middle-class American children aged 9 to 18 months and their mothers. They were assessed in an 8-phase controlled observation study and the child's behavior was recorded after each phase. The first phase involved entering the child and his or her caregiver into the unfamiliar room, followed briefly by encouraging the child to explore the new environment. After about 3 minutes a stranger comes in, talks to the assistant and tries to interact with the child. The mother then leaves the room and the stranger offers comfort to the child if necessary. The caregiver then reenters the room after 3 minutes and offers comfort to the child if necessary and the stranger leaves. Soon after the caregiver leaves, leaving the child alone, however the stranger returns offering comfort to the child. Finally, the caregiver comes in and greets the child. The behaviors tested were proximity seeking, exploration and secure base behavior, stranger anxiety, separation anxiety, and reunion response. Three types of attachment have been distinguished; insecure-avoidant, securely attached, and insecure-resistant. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayA strength of Ainsworth's Strange Situation is its high internal validity. Through the use of a controlled condition, Ainsworth could control many of the factors within his experiment. Ainsworth controlled the experiment using the same stranger throughout the entire study, the amount of time with/without the baby was assessed, and the mother's behavior was controlled. Another strength of his study is that it was performed and observed very easily. The study required very little equipment, except for a child-sized room and toys for the child to interact with. As a result of the controlled condition, the study can be replicated several times to check the consistency of the results. Additionally, the researchers stood behind a one-way mirror and observed mother-child and child-stranger relationships as they occurred. On the other hand, a disadvantage of Ainsworth's strange situation is its low external validity. Because the experiment takes place in an artificial environment, the data cannot easily be applied to the outside world. The artificial environment may have caused discomfort to the child and therefore influenced the results. Another drawback of the study would be its cultural bias. The experiment was performed only on American mothers and newborns, which reduces the representativeness of the data since attachments in other cultures may differ from American ones. A final disadvantage of Ainsworth's study is that it studies only mother-infant relationships, excluding father-infant attachments. In 1981, Main and Weston found that children behaved differently in the strange situation depending on which parent they were with. Some children showed insecure attachments to their mothers, but secure attachments to their fathers, demonstrating that attachment types are related to individual relationships with caregivers and not fixed characteristics..