Theories

Mary Ainsworth's work in attachment theory had its roots in her research with John Bowlby at Tavistock. Bowlby and another colleague, James Robertson, first introduced her to the naturalistic method of observation and descriptive statistics that would later become her trademark.

Before Bowlby, the prevailing view among psychologists and psychoanalysts was that infants bonded with their mothers simply because the mother fed the child and met his or her physical needs. Bowlby was also a maverick in his belief that evolutionary and ethological theory both influenced personality development and the attachment process (see sidebar). Ethology, or the study of animal (and human) behavior and adaptation in natural surroundings, particularly influenced Ainsworth's work. While Ainsworth initially questioned the place of ethology in attachment formation, she later came to embrace the idea. Bowlby's theory...