Cultural variations of attachment Flashcards
what did Van ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg do?
Conducted a meta analysis to look at proportions of each type of attachment across different countries as well as differences within countries to see variation within a culture
Procedure
- Located 32 studies of attachment where the strange situation had been used
- 27/32 of the studies in their meta - analysis was individualistic cultures
- Conducted in 8 countries ( 15 in the USA)
- Studies yielded accounted for 1990 children
Key findings
- Most common - Secure
Ranged from 75% Britain - 50% china - 2nd - Insecure - avoidant
Except israel and Japan - 3rd - insecure - resistant
Ranged from 35 britain to 30% Israel - most insecure avoidant - Germany 35%
- Most insecure resistant - Japan 27%
- Least secure - china
- Found internal variation was 1.5 times greater than between cultures
avoidant most common in western cultures ( individualistic)
Resistant was most common in colelctivist cultures
Conclusions
- supports idea that secure attachment is best for healthy social development
- Dominance of secure attachment - suggests globally preferred attachment style which may have a biological basis
- however variations in parenting style could explain differences between countries
Research supporting secure attachment
Tronick - studied an African tribe ‘ The eife’ who live in family groups
- Infants looked after and breastfed by different women
- Usually slept with mother at night
Despite differences in practices the infants at 6 months still showed 1 primary attachment
why does germany have a high amount of insecure avoidant?
German parnents discourage close proximity / encourage dependence therefore classified by ss as avoidant even though it is just due to child rearing / pracctices
simonelli
Measured attachment using strange situation in modern italian mother infant pairs
- Found in comparison to historical infant families - lower percentage of secure infants and a high percentage of avoidant infants
Researchers argue this suggest this change is a healthy coping mechanism to changes in real life → adjusting to absent mothers by not showing extreme emotion when separated
strengths
- Evidence for Bowlby’s theory
Supporters of Bowlby’s theory use V/K as support for the innate nature instinctive drive to develop monotoropic relationship between mother and infant
‘Secure’ was found as norm across all cultures - suggesting a biological perhaps evolved component in attachment
- Scale is impressive – large sample size globally
( 2,000 ppt)
Large amound of data means any poorly conducted study / unusual result has little impact on overall results
Increases the internal validity of findings
Limitations
- However, detractors highlight the alternative explanation of global media V/K argue that international media perpetuate similar messages about parenting → could explain the cross cultural similarities
Undermines the role of biology, challenging Bowlby - Countries rather than cultures
Within a country there are many different child practices
E.g Urban Vs rural divide in Japan
Ljzeendor and sagi - Japan
Tokyo ( urban) - similar to western studies
Rural areas - over - representation of insecure - L/K Found more variation within cultures then outside, presumably the data was collected on different subcultures within a country
- This issue reduce the internal validity as they were not studying culture and means that we must exercise caution in assuming samples are representative
- The strange situation lacks validity
Questioning of whether it is measuring attachment at all
Kagan et all - suggests it is related to temperament than the relationship with attachment figure
SS only assessing anxiety not attachment
Method of assessment is biassed
Initially designed by american samples with an assumption it would work globally → risking cultural bias
In ss secure is viewed as the ‘best type’ but is far common in individualistic cultures
Risks cultural bias as is ethnocentric to assume western cultural norms are superior
Germany has highest rate of insecure attachment but may be due to parenting style not insecure population
Encourage dependence / proximity seeking → bias results incorrectly classifying children as insecure
Suggests meta analysis cultural variations should be treated with caution as underlying methodology suffers cultural bias → as Impsoed etic causes for results from non western cultures to not be valid
As different behaviours mean different things to different cultures
- Low population validity
As a disproportionately high number of the studies reviewed were conducted in the USA (18/32), the overall findings would have been distorted by these.
apparent consistency between cultures might not genuinely reflect how much attachment types vary between cultures.
May lack temporal validity due to changing family life in modern world - Simonelli et al measure attachment using AA it was found in comparison to historical italian families there was lower secure and higher avoidant
Therefore suggesting this is a change to a healthy coping mechanism due to demands of modern life with mothers being absent → findings ways to cope without emotion
