Cultural variations in attachment Flashcards
What did van IJendoorn and Kroonenburg look into?
They looked at the proportions of secure, insecure resistant and insecure attachment across a range of countries and within a country.
What procedure was carried out by van IJendoorn and Kroonenburg?
They conducted a meta-analysis on 32 studies of attachment which were carried out in 8 countries.
What did van IJendoorn and Kroonenburg find?
In all countries secure attachment was the most common attachment type but in Britain there were 75% classed as secure whereas in China it was only 50%. Insecure resistant was the least common, ranging from 3% in Britain to 30% in Israel. They also found that there was 150% more variation within countries than between countries. For example in the US one study found 46% were securely attached whilst another found 90% were.
What did Simonella et al do?
They conducted a study in Italy to see whether attachments types matched those found in previous studies. They found that 50% were secure and 36% were insecure avoidant. This suggests that there is cultural changes that can make a big difference to attachment types.
What study did Jin et al. do?
They compared attachment types in Korea to other studies and found that the proportions of secure and insecure attachment were similar to in most countries. However, only one child was avoidant.
What are the strengths of the studies into attachment?
There are large samples which means there is higher internal validity.
What are the weakness of the studies into attachment?
The samples tend to be unrepresentative of culture as there are different families living in different conditions such as poverty, which may lead to worse attachments. Also, urban settings such as Tokyo are more likely to have results similar to western studies.
The method of assessment is biased as it is an example of imposed etic as it was designed to be used in America and Britain rather than in more collectivist cultures.
There is an alternative explanation for cultural similarity as it may be innate and so the behaviour is generally the same, with cross cultural differences which can be explained by the media.
The strange situation lacks validity as it may be measuring temperament instead of attachment.
