Cultural Differences

Question 1

Features of collectivist cultures…

Answer 1

• Emphasis on group effort and co-operation
• Focus on interpersonal development on infants
• More favourable reaction to obedience and social behaviour
• Less anti-social behaviour
• Multiple attachments are encouraged

Question 2

Features of individualist cultures…

Answer 2

• Emphasis is on personal achievement
• Focus on developing initiative in infants
• Mothers react favourably to independence
• More anti-social behaviour

Question 3

Who investigated cultural differences?

Answer 3

Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988)

Question 4

What did Van Ijzendoorn and Kronenberg do?

Answer 4

Carried out a meta analysis by using different samples of infants from different countries in the strange situation to investigate inter-cultural and intra-cultural differences in attachment.

Question 5

What were the findings?

Answer 5

• China had lowest % of type B with 50%
• Sweden and Great Britain had highest % of type B with 75%
• Germany had highest % of type A with 35%
• Japan had lowest % of type A with 5%
• Israel had highest % of type C with 29%
• Britain had lowest % of type C with 3%

Question 6

Evaluation of VI and K…

Answer 6

• Meta-analysis may suffer as there is no inter-research reliability
• Study can be seen as judgemental and criticising to parents
• No high needs children so it can’t skew data, however it can’t be generalised to that group of children
• Small sample sizes, eg. China with only 25 doesn’t show intra-cultural differences and cannot be generalised for the whole country