Cultural Variations In Attachment Flashcards
What was Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg’s study looking at?
The proportions of secure, insecure-avoidant and insecure-resistant attachments across a range of countries to assess cultural variations.
They also looked at the differences within the same countries to get an index of variations within a culture.
What was the procedure for Van Izjendoorn and Kroonenberg’s study?
Researchers located 32 studies of attachment where SS has been used to investigate proportions of babies with different attachment types.
Conducted in 8 countries - 15 in the USA.
How many children did the studies yield result for?
Over 1,990 - data for these 32 studies was meta-analysed which means results of studies were combined and analysed together weighting each study for its sample size.
What were the findings f Van Izjendoorn and Kroonberg’s study?
A wide variation between proportions of attachment types in different studies.
What was the most common classification in each country and how did this vary?
Secure attachment was the most common.
75% in Britain to 50% in China.
What were rates of insecure-resistant attachment like in individualist and collectivist cultures?
Individualist - similar to Ainsworth’s original sample.
Collectivist - rates were above 25%.
Wwhat were variations between results of studies within the same country?
150% greater than those between countries.
What did Simonelli et al conduct?
A study in Italy to see whether the proportions of babies of different attachment types still matches those found in previous studies
How many babies did researchers in Simonelli et al’s study assess?
76 babies ages 12 months using SS.
found 50% were secure, 36% insecure-avoidant - lower rate of secure attachment and higher rate of insecure-avoidant than has been found in many studies.
What do researchers suggest are the reasons for differences in Simonelli et al’s study?
Because increasing numbers of mothers of very young children work long hours and use professional childcare.
What do SImonelli et Al’s findings suggest?
Patterns of attachment types aren’t static but vary in line with cultural change.
What did Jin et al conduct?
A study to compare the proportions of attachment types in Korea with other studies.
What was Jin et Al’s procedure?
SS was used to assess 87 babies.
What were the results in Jin et Al’s study?
Overall proportions of insecure and secure babies were similar to those in most countries with most babies being secure.
However more babies classified as insecurely attached were resistant and only one baby was avoidant.
What type of attachment type seems to be the norm?
Secure attachment supporting bowlby’s idea that attachment is innate and universal and this type is the universal norm however research also shows that cultural practices influence attachment type too.
Evaluation: Most studies were conducted by indigenous psychologists
Van Izjendoorn and Kroonenberg were both German and Takahashi was Japanese. This means that any cross-cultural problems that could occur can be avoided e.g. researchers misunderstandings of the language used by ppts or having difficulty when communicating instructions to them.
This means there is an excellent chance that researchers and ppts communicated successfully enchanting the validity of the data collected.
Evaluation: not all cross-cultural research was done by indigenous researchers.
Morelli and Tronick were outsiders from America wwhen they studied child-rearing and patterns of attachment in Efé of Zaire. Therefore their data might have been affected by difficulties in gathering data from ppts outside their own culture. This means that data from some countries might have been affected by bias and difficulty in cross-cultural communication.
Evaluation: the impact of confounding variables on findings.
Studies in different countries aren’t usually matched for methodology when compared in reviews/ meta-analyses. Sample characteristics can confound results as can age of ppts studied in different countries. Environmental factors might also affect findings e.g. size of the room. This means that looking at attachment behaviour in different non-matched studies conducted in different countries may not tell us anything about cross-cultural patterns of attachment.
Evaluation: Imposed etic.
Imposed etic occurs when we impose an idea or technique that works in one cultural context to another. E.g. in attachment research is in the use of babies response to reunion with the caregiver in SS. In Britain’s no the USA lack of affection on reunion may indicate avoidant attachment but in Germany this behaviour is more likely to be interpreted as independence rather than insecurity. This means behaviour measured by SS may not have the same meanings in different cultural contexts and comparing them across cultures is meaningless.
