lesson 4- cross-cultural variations in attachment

Question 1

Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988)

Answer 1

-conducted meta-analysis of 32 studies into attachment to see if occurs across all cultures
-all studies used had the strange situation to measure attachment, looked at relationships between mothers and babies all of whom were under 24 months of age
-studies were conducted in 8 countries, some individualistic cultures (USA, UK, Germany), collectivist cultures (Japan, China, Israel)

Question 2

findings

Answer 2

-secure attachment style was the most common attachment style in all the 8 countries
-second most common was insecure-avoidant, except Israel and Japan where insecure-avoidant was rare but insecure-resistant was common
-lowest percentage of secure attachment was in China
-highest percentage of secure attachments was in Great Britain
-highest percentage of insecure avoidant attachments was in West Germany
-overall variations within cultures were 1.5 times greater than the variation between cultures

Question 3

findings conclusion

Answer 3

-similarities between cultures suggest that caregiver and infant interactions have universal characteristics and so may be partly instinctive
-however, variations between cultures show that the cultural differenced in child rearing practices also play an important role in attachment styles
-variations within cultures indicates sub-cultural differences such as social class, play an important role in an infants attachment style, factors possibly more important than culture

Question 4

evaluation (1 strength 4 weaknesses)

Answer 4

-meta-analysis, very large sample, increases validity
-strange situation methodology developed in US and may not be valid in other cultures, eg Ainsworth assumed a willingness to explore means a child is securely attached but this may not be the case in other cultures, culturally biased
-infants from Israel lived on a Kibbutz (closed community) and did not come into contact with strangers, could be the reason why these children showed severe distress when confronted with strangers and so were classed as resistant
-not actually comparing cultures but countries, countries have different sub-cultures that have different child rearing practices eg one study in Tokyo found similar attachment style distributions to US whereas studies in more rural areas of Japan found many more insecure-resistant infants
-all studies used look into infants attachments to mothers, might be insecurely attached to mothers but securely to fathers, only measures attachment style to one individual not overall, Main and Weston (1981)