Cultural variations Flashcards
What are Cultural variations?
The ways that different groups of people vary in terms go their social practices, and the effects these practices have on development and behaviour
Who did the key study of cultural variations?
Van IJzendoorn & Kroonberg (1988)
What were the procedures of Van IJzendoorn & Kroonenbergs study?
Conducted a meta-analysis of the findings from 32 studies of attachment behaviour - all together over 2000 strange situation classifications in 8 different countries
Interested to see whether there were inter-cultural differences (differences between countries/cultures) and intra-cultural differences (differences within the same culture)
What did Van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg find?
Found that the differences between countries/cultures were small - secure attachment was the most common in every country - Suggests a universal pattern of attachment – possibly innate and biological.
Western cultures (e.g., UK, Germany, USA):
Higher levels of insecure-avoidant
Especially high in Germany – linked to value of independence
Eastern cultures (e.g., Japan, Israel):
Higher levels of insecure-resistant (Type C)
In Japan, infants are rarely left alone, so they get very distressed during separation
Finding on intra-cultural differences - 1.5 times more variation within countries
Shows that subcultures within a country may have different child-rearing practices
Why might this theory be culturally biased?
Rothbaum - the continuity hypothesis doe not have the same meaning in both cultures - e.g. they define competence differently (Western=independent, Eastern=group-orientated)
It was developed in the USA based on Western norms, so applying it to non-Western cultures may produce invalid or misleading results e.g. Japanese infants appeared more insecure-resistant, but this may reflect cultural differences in child-rearing (e.g., infants rarely being left alone), not necessarily insecure attachment.
Why can it be argued they looked at countries not cultures?
They compared countries like the US and Japan without looking at the subcultures within it i.e. the cultures
Within each of these subcultures there are different childcare practices
For instance, urban and rural areas in the same country may have very different parenting styles, which the study did not account for. This is supported by the finding that intra-cultural variation was greater than inter-cultural variation
Arguably the differences when comparing countries may be due to looking at different cultures within the countries
What is the problem with using the same explanations of attachment for all cultures?
Rothbaum et al.’s (2000) - attachment behaviours are interpreted differently across cultures, so cultural relativism is important rather than applying the same ideas to all cultures
What a strength of this data?
Large sample - increase population validity +makes it more reliable
reduces anomalous results or biased samples
