Cultural Variations in Attachment

Question 1

What were Van Ijzendoorn’s aims?

Answer 1

1. To measure the proportions of Type A/B/C attachments across cultures
2. To measure if variations exist within the same countries

Question 2

What was Van Ijzendoorn’s method?

Answer 2

• Van Ijzendoorn and Krooenberg conducted a meta-analysis of findings from 32 SS studies from 8 countries with results from 1990 children
• Also looked at intra-cultural differences

Question 3

What was Van Ijzendoorn’s findings?

Answer 3

• Secure Attachment was most common in all countries. But there was some variation in the percentage of secure attachments across countries - highest being 75% in Britain lowest being only 50% in China
• Insecure Avoidant rates were highest in Germany (perhaps due to upbringing focus on independence) and lowest in Japan and Israel
• Insecure Resistant was highest in Japan (because infants are rarely separated from their caregiver in this culture) and Israel and lowest in Britain
• Intra-cultural variation was 1.5x higher than inter-cultural variation
  e.g. Israeli city sample was more like the US than the Israeli kibbutz sample

Question 4

What were Van Ijzendoorn’s conclusions?

Answer 4

• The proportions of different attachement types varies across cultures
• Secure attachment type is most common
• Attachment type varies more within cultures than between cultures

Question 5

What was Takahashi’s methods and findings?

Answer 5

• Conducted an SS observation using 60 middle class Japanese infants and mothers
• Found similar rates of secure attachments as suggested by Ainsworth
• However, Japanese infants didn’t show any evidence of insecure avoidant and high rates on insecure resistance 32%

Question 6

What were Takahashi’s conclusions?

Answer 6

• Like the USA, the most common attachment type is secure
• However, the proportion of insecure attachments changes with cultural child rearing practices
• Mothers in Japan are rarely separated from their children explaining the high proportion on insecure resistant

Question 7

What is a strength?

Answer 7

• A strength of cultural variation research into attachment is that they use large samples
• Van Ijzendoorn and Krooenberg’s meta-analysis had a total of 1990 infants and their caregivers
• This is a strength because it reduces the impact of anomalous results (e.g. one-off unusual parent-child behaviour) on overall conclusions
• Thus due to its large sample size the research increases in internal validity

Question 8

How do Main and Solomon weaken the SS?

Answer 8

• A weakness of the cross-cultural research using SS is that it doesn’t account for all attachment types
• Main and Solomon analysed over 200 SS tapes and proposed a 4th attachment type - Type D: Insecure disorganised
• This was characterised by a lack of consistent behaviour and attachment. When dealing with stress and separation they showed very strong attachment which was suddenly followed by avoidance/looking scared of their caregiver
• As the SS doesn’t account for this attachment type, neither does the cross cultural research using it
• As such the proportion of different attachment types identified by Van Ijzendoorn and Krooenberg may be inaccurate, thus reducing the validity of their findings

Question 9

How do Main and Weston weaken the SS?

Answer 9

• Another weakness of cross-cultural research using the SS is that it doesn’t account for infants having different attachment types with different caregivers
• The SS aims to measure the attachment type an infant has in general but only focuses on one relationship - infant and mother thus giving a limited picture of a child’s attachment behaviour
• Main and Weston found that childen behaved differently based on the parent they were with
• Therefore the different attachment types observed across cultures may be limited to the attachment type the infant shares with one caregiver rather than their general attachment tendencies
• Thus cross-cultural research reduces in validity