Cultural Variations in attachment Flashcards
Van ijzendoorn (1988) procedure
Conducted a large scale meta analysis of 2000 infants in 32 studies from 8 countries; used the strange situation
Van Ijzendoorn’s findings (1988)
-General patterns: Secure attachment was the most common type in all countries and generally insecure resistant was the least common type.
-Avoidant was more common in individualistic western cultures and resistant in collectivist non western
-There was more variation between studies within countries rather than between countries.
Individual findings:
Germany had the most insecure avoidant infants(35%).
Japan had the most insecure resistant (27%)
China had the least secure infants (50%).
The UK had 22% avoidant, 75% secure and 3% resistant
Van Ijzendoorns research suggests
Secure attachment was the most common type in all countries;suggesting there is a globally preferred attachment style which potentially has biological bias
However, there are variations that paretning styles could explain
German families encourage independence/non clingy behaviour, resulting in infants that show little distress and more german children are classified as avoidant
Japanese mothers spend significant time with their infants, explaining extreme resistant reactions to separations
Ainsworths and van ijzendoorns findings lack temporal valdiity
-Ainsworths and Van Ijzendoorns findgings lack temporal validity due to the changing nature of family life in the modern world
-Simonelli et al (2014) measured attachment using the Strange Situation in modern italian infant motehr pairs, it was foudn that compared to the previous italian families, there was a signifcnatly % of secure infants and a significanltly higher precebtage of avoidant infants
-This could be because of the increasing number of mothers working long hours/ going back to work after a short time of child birth
-These findings suggest that cultural changes can make a dramatic differnece to patterns of secure and insecure attachment
