Attachment – cultural variations in attachment

Question 1

What are cultural variations?

Answer 1

Culture refers to the norms and values that exist within any group of people cultural variations then are the differences in norms and values that exist between people and different groups. In attachment research, we are concerned with the differences in the proportion of children of different attachment types.

Question 2

What is the procedure of Van LJenzdoorn and Kroonenberg study?

Answer 2

The aim was to look at the proportions of secure insecure avoidant and insecure resistant attachment type across cultural variation.
- The researchers located 32 studies of attachment where the strain situation had been used to investigate the proportions of babies with different attachment types. these were conducted in eight countries overall the studies yielded for 1990 the date for these two studies was meta-analysed. This means that the results of the studies were combined and analyse together waiting each study for its sample size.

Question 3

What were the findings of the cultural variation study?

Answer 3

There was a wide variation between the proportions of attachment types in different studies. In all countries secure attachment was the most common classification. However, the proportion varied from 75% in Britain to 50% in China. In individual cultures rates of insecure resistant attachment were similar to Ainsworth original sample but this was noted not true for the collective sample from China, Japan and Israel were rates were above 25%. an interesting finding was that variations between result of studies within the same country were actually 150% greater than those between countries in the US for example one study found only 46% secure attached compared one sample as high as 90%

Question 4

What is the conclusion to cultural variations in attachment?

Answer 4

• Secure attachment seems to be the norm in a wide range of cultures supporting Bowlby’s Siri that attachment is innate and universal and this type is the universal norm.
• However, the research also clearly shows that cultural practices have an influence on attachment type