Cultural Variations in Attachment

Question 1

What was Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg’s aim?

Answer 1

To measure the proportions of Type A/B/C attachments acorss a range of cultures, and if variations exist within the same countries too.

Question 2

What was Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg’s procedure?

Answer 2

• Conducted a meta-analysis of findings from 32 studies where Strange Situation had been used
• These 32 studies were conducted in 8 countries with results for 1990 children
• Also interested in finding out the intra-cultural differences

Question 3

Intra-cultural differences =

Answer 3

Differences in attachment types within the same culture

Question 4

What were Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg’s findings (3 attachment types)?

Answer 4

• Secure Attachment
• Insecure Avoidant
• Insecure Resistant

Question 5

Secure Attachment findings:

Answer 5

Most common classification in every country, but some variation found in the percentage of secure attachments - highest = 75% in Britain to around lowest in China = 50%

Question 6

Insecure Avoidant findings:

Answer 6

Highest in Germany and lowest in Japan and Israel - perhaps high level in Germany was due to their focus of independant upbringing

Question 7

Insecure Resistant findings:

Answer 7

Highest in Japan and Israel, lowest in Britain

Question 8

1.5x greater variation…

Answer 8

Within each culture than variation between countries. E.g one of the Japanese samples was more similar to two of the US samples than the other Japanese sample.

Question 9

What was Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg’s conclusion?

Answer 9

• The proportions of the different attachment types changes within cultures, however, secure attachment is the most common attachment type in all cultures.
• Variation in attachment type varies more within cultures than it does between cultures.

Question 10

What was Takahashi’s procedure?

Answer 10

Conducted the Strange Situation observation using 60 middle class Japanese infants and their mothers.

Question 11

What was Takahashi’s findings?

Answer 11

1) Found similar rates of secure attachment as suggested by Ainsworth
2) However, Japanese infants did not show any evidence of insecure-avoidant attachment and high rates of insecure resistant attachments (32%)

Question 12

What was Takahashi’s conslusions?

Answer 12

• Like in the USA, the most common attachment type is secure
• The proportion of insecure attachments changes with cultural child rearing practises
• Mothers in Japan rarely separate from their children which explains why there is a significant proportion of insecure resistant.

Question 13

A weakness of cross- cultural research using the strange situation is that it can be argued to be culture-bound, meaning it can only be applied in Western cultures.

Answer 13

Takahashi (1990) noted that the test does not work in Japan because Japanese mothers are rarely separated from their children. In this country a mother leaving her child with a stranger is not a realistic day to day scenario. Since the strange situation reflects the norms of American culture (etic approach) and does not consider differences in child rearing practices in other cultures, it can be considered culturally biased, and infants were so distressed when separated from the caregiver that for 90% of those infantss, the experiment had to be stopped.
WB: shows that the SS takes an etic approach by only reflecting the norms of western culture and NOT accounting for cultural differences, thus being culturally biased. Therefore, as SS reduces in validity as a tool of measuring attachment, so does cultural research as it uses SS.

Question 14

A strength of combining the results of cross-cultural attachment studies using the strange situation is that it can result in a very large sample.

Answer 14

For example, Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg’s meta-analysis had a total of 1990 infants and their primary attachment figures.
SB: having a large sample reduces the negative effect that anomalous results can have on the conclusions, therefore they were better able to measure what they intended to measure. Thus increasing in internal validity.

Question 15

A weakness of cultural variations research is that there is a cultural imbalance in the studies used.

Answer 15

The sample for Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg’s study is biased towards having a heavily American population. Out of the 32 studies in the meta-analysis, 18 were conducted on American participants and only one conducted on Chinese infants.
WB: cannot draw conclusions about attachment practises of China based on only 25 infant-parent pairs whereas there are hundreds of pairs to draw conclusions for America even tho it has a smaller population. Conclusions about valiance within the culture cannot be applied to the whole of China based on just one study. Therefore the meta analysis is not fairly representative of all cultures and thus lacks validity.

Question 16

A weakness of measuring attachment with the strange situation in cross-cultural research is that infants may have different attachments with different caregivers.

Answer 16

Researchers claim that focusing on one relationship between the carer and the infant might give us a limited picture on a child’s attachment behaviour. Main and Weston found that children behaved differently based on which parent they were with. Therefore, the different patterns of attachment types seen across cultures may be limited to the attachment the infant shares with one caregiver rather than reflecting differences in general attachment tendencies. Thus, reducing the validity of cross-cultural attachment research.

Question 17

A weakness of cross-cultural research using the strange situation is that later research demonstrated that Ainsworth has not accounted for a key fourth type of attachment.

Answer 17

Main and Solomon (1986) analysed over 200 Strange Situation tapes and proposed a type D attachment: insecure-disorganised. This was characterised by a lack of consistent social behaviour and attachment. When dealing with stress and separation, they showed very strong attachment which was suddenly followed by avoidance or looking scared of the caregiver. Since cross-cultural research does not take into account this attachment type, the proportion of different attachment types in different cultures identified by Van lizendoorn and Kroonenberg may not be accurate. This reduces the validity of their findings.