Lesson 9: Cultural variations in attachment

Question 1

What does culture refer to?

Answer 1

The norms and values that exist within any group of people.

Question 2

What are cultural variations?

Answer 2

Differences in norms and values that exist between people in different groups. In attachment research we are concerned with the differences in the proportion of children of different attachment types.

Question 3

What does the term subculture refer to?

Answer 3

A group within a country that, although it shares many of the dominant cultural characteristics of that country, may also have some special different characteristics.

Question 4

Individualistic cultures

Answer 4

• Western cultures tend to be classes as individualistic which value independence and the importance of the individual

Question 5

Collectivist cultures

Answer 5

• Usually non Western countries
• Emphasise the importance of the group or collective
• Such cultures are characterised by the extent to which things are shared
• They value interdependence i.e. aspire to be dependent on each other rather than function as self-determining individuals

Question 6

Ainsworth in Uganda (1967)

Answer 6

• Conducted a two year naturalistic observation of mother-infant interaction in Uganda
• Pps were 26 mothers and infants who lived in 6 villages surrounding Kampala
• She observed that some mothers were more sensitive to their infants needs and these mothers tended to have ‘securely attached’ infants. Secure attachments then led the infant to have increasing competence and independence.

Question 7

Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988) procedure

Answer 7

• Conducted a meta analysis of 32 studies into attachment to see if attachment occurs in the same way across all cultures
• All of the studies they included had used the strange situation to measure attachment- these studies looked at the relationships between mothers and their babies, all of whom were under 24 months of age
• Studies conducted in 8 different countries, some individualist (UK, USA, Germany) and some collectivist (Japan, China, Israel)

Question 8

Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988) findings

Answer 8

• Secure attachments was the most common attachment style in all of the eight countries studied
• Second most common was insecure-avoidant, except in Israel and Japan where avoidant was rare but resistant was common
• Lowest percentage of secure attachments was in China
• Highest percentage of secure attachments was in Britain
• Highest percentage of insecure-avoidant attachments was in West Germany
• Overall variations within cultures were 1.5 times greater than the variations between cultures

Question 9

Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988) conclusion

Answer 9

• Similarities between cultures suggest that caregiver and infants interactions have universal characteristics and so may be partly instinctive
• However, the variations between cultures show that the cultural differences in child rearing practises also play an important role in attachment styles
• Variations within cultures indicate that sub-cultural differences, such as social class, play an important role in an infants attachment style- these factors may be more important than culture

Question 10

Positive of cultural variation in attachment

Answer 10

• The study is a meta analysis, which includes a very large sample- this increases the validity of the findings

Question 11

Negatives of cultural variation in attachment

Answer 11

• The strange situation methodology was developed in the United States and it may not be valid in other cultures. For instance, Ainsworth assumed that a willingness to explore means a child is securely attached but this may not be the case in other cultures. This means the methodology is culturally biased.
• The infants from Israel in this study lived on a Kibbutz (closed community) and did not come into contact with strangers. This could be the reason why these children showed severe distress when confronted with strangers and so were classed as insecure-resistant.
• This study was not actually comparing cultures but countries. For instance, they compared the USA with Japan. Both of these countries have many different sub-cultures and that have different child rearing practices. One study of attachment in Tokyo found similar attachment style distributions to the USA, whereas studies in more rural areas of Japan found many more insecure-resistant infants.
• All of the studies used in this meta-analysis looked at infants’ attachments to their mothers. Children might be insecurely attached to their mothers but securely attached to their fathers. The strange situation is therefore not measuring a child’s attachment style but their attachment to one individual. Main and Weston (1981) found that children behave differently depending on which parent they are with.