Person
Mary Ainsworth
American-Canadian developmental psychologist who joined John Bowlby's research team at the Tavistock Clinic in 1950 and became his principal collaborator in building attachment theory. Her observational studies of mothers and infants in Uganda and in Baltimore, and the Strange Situation procedure she devised, gave the theory its empirical footing and its classification of secure, avoidant and ambivalent patterns of attachment. She also contributed the idea of the attachment figure as a secure base for exploration.
- Born
- 1913
- Died
- 1999
- Known for
collaborated with
- John Bowlby 1950 Ainsworth joined Bowlby's team at the Tavistock Clinic in 1950; their partnership, sustained by correspondence after she left London, lasted until Bowlby's death and produced attachment theory and its empirical programme.
introduced
- Secure base Ainsworth used the phrase in her 1940 doctoral dissertation on security theory and later made the secure base a working concept in her observational studies of infants.
developed
- Attachment theory Through her Uganda and Baltimore studies and the Strange Situation procedure, Ainsworth tested the theory empirically and added the distinction between secure, avoidant and ambivalent attachment and the role of maternal sensitivity.