Attachment: Cultural Variation Flashcards
what was Van Izjendoorn + Kronenberg’s research on cultural variation?
they conducted a meta-analysis of 32 studies using 8 countries, investigating patterns of attachment across a variety of cultures. they used the Strange Situation to classify infants as either secure, insecure avoidant or inscure resistant. secure was the most common (50% China, 75% UK). in collectivist cultures, insecure-resistant were higher (25%) that US. in Germany, insecure-avoidant was higher than US.
what was Simonella’s research on cultural variation?
demonstrated that the proportion of securely attached children in Italy was only 50% (lower than expected). these changes may be due to changing cultural and social expectations of mothers - more mothers are working and using childcare, decreasing likelihood of their children forming secure attachments with their consistent primary caregiver.
what was Jin’s research into cultural variation?
he assessed 87 Korean infants aged 6 months and found the majority of insecurels attached children were insecure resistant, not avoidant. this pattern is similar to Japan, suggesting similarities in child-rearing practices are influential in establishing patterns of attachment.
what’s a strength of Van Izjendoorn and Kronenberg’s research? (A03)
it’s reliable due to the significantly large sample size that they used with 1900 children. this replicability increases the validity and faith in the conclusions drawn because it decreases the likelihood that the observed results were simply due to chance or a ‘one-off’.
how does the cultural variation lack ecological validity? (A03)
it attempted to measure cultural variations in attachment through studying different countries. however multiple different cultures can exist in the same country and this is likely to be unacknowledged. Sagi + Van Izjendoorn found that rural areas had an overrepresentation of insecure-resistant whereas urban areas had similar attachment patterns to Western cultures. this suggests Van Izjendoorn and Kronenberg didn’t account for such differences.
how is the strange situation culture-bound? (A03)
the sample is biased by only using American children. the findings are unlikely to be generalisable to other cultures such as collectivist cultures. this is an example of imposed etic because Ainsworth assumes that the stages of attachment she developed can be universally applied to all children across all cultures.
