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Sex differences in responses to the stranger in the strange situation
Sex Roles
Abstract
Children are exposed to differences in adult interactive styles from an early age. The Ainsworth Strange Situation. designed as a standard measure to activate attachment behaviors in the young child, allows us to examine the child's reaction to individual differences in strangers' styles. In the present study, the effect of 11 different strangers was examined to determine if different stranger styles influenced the scoring of behavioral ratings of the child's behavior in the Strange Situation. Boys and girls reacted differently to the different strangers. Eighteen-month-old children showed more variations in their reactions to different interactional styles than did 12-month-olds. Boys showed more resistance and avoidance to strangers who used more direction and initiation. Girls did not react this way. The results are discussed in terms of the child's expectations of sex-determined styles of interaction learned from past social interactions.
I don't know why I did it, I don't know why I enjoyed it, and I don't know why I'll do it again. Bart Simpson, young character from The Simpsons, US animated television show In this chapter we will summarize the problems of aggression and their relationship to gender and maturation. We will first discuss aggression as a normative behavior and examine gender differences and their relationship to puberty. We will then focus on psychopathological forms of aggression, such as disruptive behavior disorders, again relating them to gender and pubertal development; we will conclude with a discussion of gender differences in delinquency. In each of these subsections, we will cite research that approaches the topic from an experimental, naturalistic, and clinical perspective. Aggression as a normative behavior: gender differences To understand gender differences in aggression and violence, one can take a developmental approach and examine the presence of aggression through the various life stages (Loeber and Hay, 1997). During infancy signs of frustration and rage can be observed, though significant gender differences cannot be detected. Research conducted by Weinberg and colleagues (1999) found gender differences in the emotional expressiveness among infants, although it is unclear if these differences are precursors to aggression. Infant girls were able to regulate their emotional states better than infant boys, who were more likely to show anger. During the toddler stage minimal gender differences were found to exist, but research findings are conflicted.
Early physical maturation has long been considered a risk factor for the development of delinquent girls. The basis of this relationship has not been fully explored or understood. This review summarises the current literature and research on early physical maturation in adolescent females and places it within a developmental perspective. The process of early physical maturation is also placed within a biopsychosocial model so that risk and protective factors arising from the biological, social, family, education and peer environments can be ascertained. A complex model of maturation and environmental-social interaction is constructed and currently supported by research, but it is clear that a great deal of further work is necessary to fully understand this process.
At the beginning of the 21st century there is a growing interest in the renewal of current thinking about managing and organizing. This study joins that search for novelty with an exploration of what can be learned from the theatrical rehearsal for the development of new possibilities for organizational performance and design. What insights for organizational renewal emerge from the dynamics of the rehearsal as a practice of artful making? We describe the rehearsal around the four distinct organizing principles of responsiveness, workability, unsettledness and embodiment. Taken together these principles expand the existing repertoire for organizational and managerial practice. The rehearsal shows how to nurture form giving processes in organizations through which innovative performance alternatives can be shaped and performed Key words: organizational renewal, theatre and organization, managing as designing, organizational aes
Investigated whether, in an unfamiliar, semipublic place, children as young as 18 mo of age would be sensitive to variations in the nature of social encounters between their mothers and an unfamiliar adult (E). Measures of the child's distance from the mother at the beginning of each 10-sec interval of the encounter, the percentage of 10-sec intervals spent by the child on the stranger's side of the room, frequency of child vocalizations to the mother, times child made physical contact with the mother, and frequency of smiling show that 18-mo-old children are already sensitive to background contexts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Observed 72 infants aged 12, 18, and 24 mo in the presence of their mothers and 2 adult female strangers to assess their willingness to initiate proximal interaction (PI) with unfamiliar adults. Mothers and strangers were asked to be warmly responsive to infant overtures but not to invite interaction from the infant. A majority of the infants at the 3 ages initiated PI with one or both strangers, often repeatedly. For those who engaged in 2 or more PI bouts with the strangers, a significant upward trend in bout duration and intensity was noted. Older infants gave more toys to the strangers and initiated more mutual play. Stranger–mother distance affected amount of proximity, not PI. Mother–stranger conversation was associated with less PI with the conversing stranger. At all ages infants sought more PI with their mothers than with the strangers. Although infants initiated an appreciable amount of PI with the strangers during the 40-min observation, comparison with other studies indicates that a stranger who takes the initiative by inviting play can establish more rapport much sooner. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Because of the possible implications of infant-mother attachment for later adjustment, we examined the extent to which it could be predicted by mother interactional variables and infant proneness to distress. The meta-analysis demonstrated that sensitive, responsive maternal interaction predicted the security of attachment in Ainsworth and Wittig's (1969) "strange situation." However, the strength of the relation was less than many narrative reviews have suggested. Proneness to distress, which is conceptualized as a temperamental variable, predicted resistance, which is a behavioral pattern in the strange situation that is thought to indicate one variety of insecure attachment. The strength of this association was low but was roughly comparable to that in the maternal domain. In both the maternal and infant domains, we attempted to predict the effect sizes by study characteristics such as method of assessment, sample composition, and age of subjects at the time of study. The pattern of results highlights several continuing methodological problems in the field and suggests that additional explanantory concepts are needed.
The purpose of this chapter is to present a new methodological strategy for examining the organization of behaviors thought to reflect the attachment system. The structural modeling approach offers great promise for precise specification and evaluation of hypotheses concerning the organization and development of the parent—infant attachment bond. This approach is presented as an alternative to traditional methods of analyzing attachment behaviors, as represented by the ABC classification system (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978).
12-month-old infants were given an opportunity to approach female, adult strangers who played either active or passive roles in the interaction. On 4-min trials the active strangers talked, gestured, and offered a series of toys to the infants. The passive strangers sat behind the same toys but only looked and smiled at the infants. Infants in the active-stranger group spent reliably less time near their mothers and fussed and cried less; they spent more time near the strangers, looked at them longer, and touched them more often. Further description of the infants' interaction with the active strangers indicated that they frequently watched the strangers manipulate the toys, touched toys the strangers held, exchanged toys, imitated the strangers, and devised and played games with them. The infants were highly sociable and infant-stranger interaction was reciprocal. An additional contrast between infants who encountered either the same or different strangers on each trial failed to provide evidence that the strangers' familiarity influenced the infants' reactions to them.
A reanalysis of first-year longitudinal data on infants' reactions to a stranger suggests that 2 distinct mechanisms may be promoting aversive "stranger reactions." Up through the middle of the first year occasional signs of uneasiness are attributed to a wariness of the unfamiliar; such reactions are more likely to occur in highly "reactive" infants. By around age 9 months, however, learned aversions which have their roots in prior disturbing experiences may become an important additional determinant that can supplement or override a baby's earlier proclivities.
Ethological attachment theory is a landmark of 20th century social and behavioral sciences theory and research. This new paradigm for understanding primary relationships across the lifespan evolved from John Bowlby's critique of psychoanalytic drive theory and his own clinical observations, supplemented by his knowledge of fields as diverse as primate ethology, control systems theory, and cognitive psychology. By the time he had written the first volume of his classic Attachment and Loss trilogy, Mary D. Salter Ainsworth's naturalistic observations in Uganda and Baltimore, and her theoretical and descriptive insights about maternal care and the secure base phenomenon had become integral to attachment theory. Patterns of Attachment reports the methods and key results of Ainsworth's landmark Baltimore Longitudinal Study. Following upon her naturalistic home observations in Uganda, the Baltimore project yielded a wealth of enduring, benchmark results on the nature of the child's tie to its primary caregiver and the importance of early experience. It also addressed a wide range of conceptual and methodological issues common to many developmental and longitudinal projects, especially issues of age appropriate assessment, quantifying behavior, and comprehending individual differences. In addition, Ainsworth and her students broke new ground, clarifying and defining new concepts, demonstrating the value of the ethological methods and insights about behavior. Today, as we enter the fourth generation of attachment study, we have a rich and growing catalogue of behavioral and narrative approaches to measuring attachment from infancy to adulthood. Each of them has roots in the Strange Situation and the secure base concept presented in Patterns of Attachment. It inclusion in the Psychology Press Classic Editions series reflects Patterns of Attachment's continuing significance and insures its availability to new generations of students, researchers, and clinicians.
Six trained observers (aged 19–31 yrs) were compared while watching 15 children (aged 18–36 mo) directly or on videotape. Findings indicate that Ss were slightly less reliable when watching videotapes than when watching real situations. The major significant difference was that far more events went undetected in the videotape condition. Of the 3 sections of the system of behavior coding used (child behavior, reactor, and reaction), the reactor and reaction were the most likely to be missed by the video observer, especially if the target child was engaged in active play and not sitting at a central table. It is suggested that this results in a qualitatively deficient picture when videotaped data of children in playgroup settings are used. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The concepts of attachment and attachment behavior are considered from an ethological-evolutionary viewpoint. Attachment behavior and exploration are viewed in balance, and the biological functions of each are discussed. As an illustration of these concepts, a study is reported of 56 white, middle-class infants, 49-51 weeks of age, in a strange situation. The presence of the mother was found to encourage exploratory behavior, her absence to depress exploration and to heighten attachment behaviors. In separation episodes such behaviors as crying and search increased. In reunion episodes proximity-seeking and contact-maintaining behaviors were heightened. In a substantial proportion of Ss, contact-resisting behaviors were also heightened in the reunion episodes, usually in conjunction with contact-maintaining behaviors, thus suggesting ambivalence. Some Ss also displayed proximity-avoiding behavior in relation to the mother in the reunion episodes. These findings are discussed in the context of relevant observational, clinical, and experimental studies of human and nonhuman primates, including studies of mother-child separation. In conclusion, it is urged that the concepts of attachment and attachment behavior be kept broad enough to comprehend the spectrum of the findings of this range of studies.
Infant-mother attachment: The origins and developmental significance of individual differences in Strange Situation behavior
- M E Lamb
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- M. E. Lamb
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- B I Fagot
Fagot, B. I. (1983). Interactive behavior code. Unpublished instrument. (Available from B. I.