Cultural Variations

Question 1

Overall, what has research found?

Answer 1

Research by psychologists into cultural variations has focussed on two types of culture: collectivist and individualist.
-Broadly, collectivist cultures focus more on community and interpersonal relationships whereas individualistic cultures focus on independence and achievement.
- Research uses cultures to investigate where the cultural expectations impact on the type of attachment observed.

Question 2

Van lzendoorn and Kroonenberg

Answer 2

• Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988) conducted a meta-analysis using the data from 2,000 children from 32 studies that used the Strange Situation to measure attachment type.
  -Research from 8 different countries was compared including Western and non-Western countries.
• They compared the different proportions of attachment types found in each culture.
• They used studies that were as similar as possible in order to avoid extraneous variables: for example, they only used studies where the mother was the caregiver.

Question 3

What where the findings?

Answer 3

Secure attachment was the most common in all cultures ranging between 75% in the UK to 50% in China.

• Within insecure attachments, West Germany m35% and other individualist cultures had a higher proportion of avoidant attachments

Japan 29% and other collectivist cultures had a higher proportion of resistant to avoidant types.

-Differences were also found within cultures: In the 2 Japanese studies, one had no avoidant babies & the other had 10%.

Question 4

A03 - Majority in America

Answer 4

• The Strange situation technique as well as half of the studies (18 out of 32) were carried out in the United States, reflecting the dominance by that country in research in this area.
• 27 of the studies were carried out in individualist cultures with only 5 taking place in collectivist cultures.
• This implies that the sample used by Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg may not be generalisable to other populations.

Question 5

A03 - Methodology

Answer 5

• The Strange Situation studies use a simple well-established standardised procedure and they minimised other extraneous variables by only using studies where mother was the caregiver.

-Specific groups of infants such as Down’s syndrome children or twins were not used, and studies that used less than 35 infants were not used.
-Therefore, the research has aimed to reduce the impact of
extraneous variables.
- However, due to the culturally biased nature of the interpretation of the definitions of securely/insecure attachments we must consider how different cultures value traits such as independence etc, so generalisation requires caution.