Attachment Theory in Cultural Context: Validating the Strange Situation Procedure for Nigerian Infants and Developing Culturally Normative Attachment Classifications

This study critically examines the cross-cultural validity of the Strange Situation Procedure for assessing infant-caregiver attachment in Nigerian dyads and proposes culturally normative attachment classifications grounded in Nigerian caregiving ecology across Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba, and Igbo cultural communities. The Strange Situation Procedure, developed by Ainsworth in Western contexts, assumes that brief separation from and reunion with a primary caregiver activates the attachment system in ways that reveal individual differences in security. However, Nigerian infants are typically reared within collective caregiving systems involving multiple attachment figures, and the single-caregiver isolation paradigm may generate systematically different behavioural responses that standard classification systems misinterpret. This research involved three phases: Phase 1 applied ethnographic observation and expert focus groups in 18 communities to understand local attachment context and caregiving norms. Phase 2 administered a culturally adapted Strange Situation Procedure to 240 infant-caregiver dyads aged 12 to 18 months, with video-coded behavioural analysis by both Western-trained and Nigerian attachment coders. Phase 3 developed and validated culturally normative classification bands through expert consensus and criterion validity testing. Results reveal systematically different behavioural reunion patterns in Nigerian infants compared to Western normative samples, particularly elevated disorganised and avoidant classifications under standard scoring. Revised culturally normative criteria produce classification distributions consistent with adaptive functioning expectations in the respective communities. This study provides a foundational psychometric and theoretical contribution to cross-cultural attachment research. Keywords: attachment theory, Strange Situation Procedure, cultural validity, Nigerian infants, cross-cultural psychology.