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    Strange Situation

    陌生情境测验

    Technique
    Also called
    Strange Situation Procedure, Ainsworth Strange Situation

    What is the Strange Situation?

    The Strange Situation is a roughly 20-minute laboratory procedure designed by Mary Ainsworth and colleagues. A one-year-old is twice separated from and reunited with a caregiver in an unfamiliar room, with a stranger present at times. The relationship is classified mainly from the baby’s behavior at reunion.[1]

    The two reunions: classification rests mainly on how the baby treats the caregiver here.

    How common each pattern is

    Ainsworth’s Baltimore sample (1978; 106 infants; three patterns)

    North American middle-class, non-clinical samples pooled (1999; 2,104; four patterns)

    32 samples from eight countries pooled (1988; 1,990; three patterns)

    Secure (B)Avoidant (A)Resistant (C)Disorganized (D)

    Data: Ainsworth et al. (1978), Table 7; van IJzendoorn et al. (1999), p. 229; van IJzendoorn & Kroonenberg (1988), Table 1. Disorganized was added later, so sets with different numbers of patterns cannot be compared directly.

    Select an episode to see what happens.
    Top: the eight episodes of the Strange Situation and their lengths, from Ainsworth et al. (1978), Table 3; the two reunions are outlined. Bottom: the share of each attachment pattern in three published sets of samples. Select a part for details
    Top: the eight episodes of the Strange Situation and their lengths, from Ainsworth et al. (1978), Table 3; the two reunions are outlined. Bottom: the share of each attachment pattern in three published sets of samples. Save as image (PNG)

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    Key points

    • Over eight episodes the caregiver leaves and returns twice, a stranger comes and goes twice, and the baby is alone once. Most last three minutes; separations end early for a distressed baby.[1]
    • Secure (B) infants seek the caregiver at reunion and settle quickly; avoidant (A) infants avoid or ignore them; resistant or ambivalent (C) infants seek yet resist contact and are hard to soothe.[1]
    • Main and Solomon added disorganized (D). North American middle-class samples pool to about 62% B, 15% A, 9% C, 15% D; D at least doubles in high-risk groups like maltreated infants.[2]
    • In 32 samples from eight countries, secure was commonest everywhere; avoidance was more frequent in Western Europe, resistance in Israel and Japan, yet variation within countries was 1.5 times that between them.[3]

    An example

    Jay picks up his one-year-old son from daycare each evening. Some days the boy crawls over to be held, then goes back to his blocks; other days he glances up and keeps playing. The Strange Situation looks at moments like these, but across a standardized series of episodes, not a single pickup.

    Misreadings and limits

    A classification describes a child’s relationship with one caregiver, and the same child may differ with each parent.[4] Avoidant and resistant patterns are common, organized strategies, not diagnoses.[2][4] Early papers called both “anxious attachment,” which is not the anxiety scored in adult attachment questionnaires.[1]

    Sources

    1. 1 Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the strange situation. Lawrence Erlbaum (reissued 2015, Psychology Press Classic Editions). View source
    2. 2 van IJzendoorn, M. H., Schuengel, C., & Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J. (1999). Disorganized attachment in early childhood: Meta-analysis of precursors, concomitants, and sequelae. Development and Psychopathology, 11(2), 225–249. doi:10.1017/S0954579499002035
    3. 3 van IJzendoorn, M. H., & Kroonenberg, P. M. (1988). Cross-cultural patterns of attachment: A meta-analysis of the Strange Situation. Child Development, 59(1), 147–156. doi:10.2307/1130396
    4. 4 Granqvist, P., Sroufe, L. A., Dozier, M., Hesse, E., Steele, M., van IJzendoorn, M., Solomon, J., et al. (2017). Disorganized attachment in infancy: A review of the phenomenon and its implications for clinicians and policy-makers. Attachment & Human Development, 19(6), 534–558. doi:10.1080/14616734.2017.1354040

    Last checked against sources: October 27, 2026