Cultural variations of attachment Flashcards
What are the 2 main types of cultures?
Individualist cultures and collectivist cultures
What is an individualist culture?
Individualist cultures value independence with each working toward their own individual goals
What are examples of individualist cultures?
USA and Europe (Western cultures)
What is a collectivist culture?
Collectivist cultures value cooperation with each working towards the family or group goals
What are examples of collectivist cultures?
Japan and Israel (Eastern cultures)
Did Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg collect their own data for their 1988 study?
They did not collect the data for this study, instead they analysed data from other studies using a method called meta-analysis
What was the meta-analysis that they used?
The meta-analysis examined 32 studies of the strange situation from 8 countries, which included the UK, US, Sweden, Japan, China, Holland, Germany and Israel
What were the 8 countries used in Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg’s study?
USA, UK, Holland, Germany, Japan, China, Israel and Sweden
What were the infants classified into in Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg’s study?
Classified infants into one of the attachment types A (Avoidant), B (Secure) or C (Ambivalent/Resistant)
What were the average findings of Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg’s study?
Average findings were consistent with Ainsworth’s original research
Secure 65%
Avoidant 21%
Resistant 14%
What was the variation within a culture like?
The variation within a culture was nearly 1.5x greater than the variation between cultures
What did Van Ijzendoorn state was the cause of the variation within cultures?
Van Ijzendoorn speculated that this was linked to socio-economic factors and levels of stress that varied between samples used within each country
How many countries produced findings that were proportionally consistent with Ainsworth and Bell?
6/8
What were the findings for Japan and Israel?
They revealed higher incidence of resistant than avoidant children
What were the findings for China?
The lowest rate of secure attachments (50%) with the remaining children falling into the other categories equally
What was concluded about the modest cross-cultural differences?
They reflect the effects of mass media, which portrays similar notions of parenting
What is a strength of Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg’s study?
Comparison is aided by the standardised methodology
What are weaknesses of Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg’s study?
- The study was not globally representative
- Overall findings are misleading
- Applying strange situation procedures and behavioural categories is ethnocentric
What did Takahashi do?
Takahashi replicated tje strange situation with 60 middle class Japanese infants and mothers using the same standardised procedure and behavioural categories
What were the findings of Takahasi’s study?
- 0% insecure avoidant
- Infants became severely distressed in the ‘infant alone step’, this situation was quite unnatural and broke cultural norms for the infants
- 32% insecure-resistant
- 68% secure
- 90% of infant-alone steps had to be stopped due to excessive infant anxiety
