Chapter 3 - Cultural Variations

Question 1

What is meant by the term culture?

Answer 1

Culture is the rules, beliefs, moral values and customs that are common to certain groups of people

Question 2

Who compared attachment in children from a range of different cultures?

Answer 2

Vanljzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988)

Question 3

What did Vanljzendoorn and Kroonenberg do?

Answer 3

Gathered data from 32 different studies that had been undertaken in 8 countries. Data from nearly 2,000 children was included and they had all undertaken the strange situation procedure. All data was analysed together which is know as a meta-analysis

Question 4

What similarities were found in Vanljzendoorn and Kroonenberg’s study?

Answer 4

Similarities between cultures were seen, such as secure attachment was the most common form of attachment in ALL cultures; mostly in GB (75%) and in China (50%)

Question 5

What variations were there in Vanljzendoorn and Kroonenberg study?

Answer 5

There were variations in the proportions of the types of insecure attachment. For example, in Japan only 5% of children were avoidant whereas in Germany 35% were avoidant

Question 6

Was there variation between the SAME cultures as well as between DIFFERENT cultures within Vanljzendoorn and Kroonenberg’s study?

Answer 6

There was lots of variation between the same culture. This is because there is differences between ethnicity, rural vs town living, wealth vs poverty

Question 7

What theory does Vanljzendoorn and Kroonenberg study support and why?

Answer 7

It supports Bowlby’s monotropic theory as all cultures most prominent type of attachment was secure attachment which suggests that there may be an instinctive drive to form this type of attachment.

Question 8

What issue does Vanljzendoorn and Kroonenberg study raise?

Answer 8

Nature vs nurture in attachment and which plays a bigger role

Question 9

😊 of Vanljzendoorn and Kroonenberg meta-analysis study?

Answer 9

The sample size is very bigger with almost 2000 children in if. This increases the validity of the conclusions that can be drawn as the impact of anomalies is likely to be reduced.

Question 10

😔 of Vanljzendoorn and Kroonenberg’s meta-analysis study?

Answer 10

Some countries only had a small number of studies included. For example, there was only one study from China with only 25 children. Therefore, we must be more cautious about drawing conclusions about the attachment patterns in this country.

Question 11

Takahashi’ study - what was the aim and method?

Answer 11

Aim - to look more closely at cultural differences in attachment in Japan.
Method - assess 60 middle class Japanese infants uing Ainsworths strange situation. All children were 1 year old and were raised at home

Question 12

What was found from Takahashi’s study?

Answer 12

That avoidant attachment is very rare in Japan but resistent attachment is seen more often in Japan than in US children

Question 13

What is an explanation for why there were more resistant infants in Takahashi’s study?

Answer 13

There may been a greater number of resistant infants in Japan a Japanese children and rarely left alone and often sleep with their parents until they are 2 years old and are carried around everywhere

Question 14

😊 of Takahashi’s study?

Answer 14

The study attempted to replicate Ainsworth and Bell’s study as closely as possible
Same age, class, strange situation

Question 15

😔 of Takahashi’s study?

Answer 15

Only assessed middle class children so cannot be sure that we can generalise the results to all Japanese children

Question 16

Ethical issue of Takahashi’s study?

Answer 16

When infants became distressed when left alone Takahashi immediately stopped the procedure. So the researchers were clearly sensitive to the ethical need to protect the babies from harm