Peer estimation of aggression was found to be in-
ternally more consistent than self-estimation. This
was true of both sexes for both the aggressive and vic-
tim version of the test. Participants seem to be more
reliable when they estimate the degree to which they
are the victims of others’ aggression than when they
estimate the degree to which they themselves are ag-
gressive. This is particularly true for girls.
Influences of Socialization
Although growing up in a violent community is
associated with aggressive behavior, the degree to
which this can be considered seriously pathological
has been called into question by the results of some
research.
See also: ANGER; VIOLENCE
Bibliography
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R. Huesmann, and A. Fraczek. ‘‘Peer and Self-Estimated
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428.
Pakaslahti, L., I. Spoof, R. L. Asplund-Peltola, and L. Keltikangas-
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Maria Adiyanti
AINSWORTH, MARY DINSMORE
SALTER (1913–1999)Mary Dinsmore Salter was born on December 1,
1913, in Glendale, Ohio, the oldest daughter of
Charles and Mary Salter. Charles, a successful busi-
nessman, moved his family to Toronto at the end of
World War I. Their daughter Mary was a gifted child
who learned to read at the age of three, and was very
attached to her father. During her undergraduate
years at the University of Toronto, William Blatz, who
had developed ‘‘security theory,’’ sparked Salter’s in-
terest in psychology. According to this theory, the
family is the secure base from which a developing in-
dividual can move out to develop new skills and inter-
ests. Salter’s dissertation, entitled ‘‘An Evaluation of
Adjustment Based on the Concept of Security,’’ was
completed in 1939.
After teaching briefly at the University of Toron-
to, Salter felt an increasing obligation to contribute to
the war effort. She entered the Canadian Women’s
Army Corps in 1942, attaining the rank of major. In
this position, she gained considerable clinical and di-
agnostic skills. After returning to the University of
Toronto as assistant professor in 1946, she co-
authored a widely used clinical book, Developments in
the Rorschach Technique, with Bruno Klopfer.
In 1950 Salter married Leonard Ainsworth, a
World War II veteran and graduate student in psy-
chology at Toronto. Both went to London, where
Leonard completed his doctoral studies and Mary ap-
plied for a research position on John Bowlby’s team
at the Tavistock Institute for Human Relations. She
was offered the position, and her collaboration with
Bowlby changed the direction of her career.
Bowlby, together with his collaborator James
Robertson, had begun to conduct observational
studies of the devastating effects of prolonged separa-
tion from the mother on young children who were
hospitalized or living in residential nurseries. Robert-
son’s observational methods, acquired while working
at Anna Freud’s wartime residential nursery, im-
pressed Ainsworth particularly and inspired her later
naturalistic studies. At the same time, she was ex-
posed to Bowlby’s emerging ideas about the evolu-
tionary foundation of infant-mother attachment, but
despite her love for ethology, she did not initially find
Bowlby’s new propositions particularly convincing.
Like most others at the time, she believed that babies
came to love their mothers because mothers satisfy
babies’ needs.
In 1953 Ainsworth’s husband accepted a postdoc-
toral position at the East African Institute for Social
Research in Kampala, Uganda. Mary accompanied
him and was able to garner funds for a short-term lon-
gitudinal study of twenty-six Ganda village families
with young infants. It was during her observations of
these families that Bowlby’s ethological notions began
to make sense to her. Thus, the first attachment study
was undertaken before Bowlby formally presented at-
tachment theory in 1958. The book, Infancy in Ugan-
da, which contains detailed case studies of everyAINSWORTH, MARY DINSMORE SALTER 21