8. cultural variations in attachment

what are cultural variations

‘culture’ refers to the norms and values that exist within a group of people

• cultural variations = the differences in norms and values that exist between people in different groups

studies of cultural variations

• META ANALYSIS - van ijzendoorn & kroonenberg

• ITALIAN - simonelli et al

• KOREAN - jin et al

what did van ijzendoorn & kroonenberg do

• conducted a study of secure, insecure avoidant and resistant attachments across a range of countries to assess cultural variation

• also looked at differences within the same countries to get an idea of variations within a culture

procedure

• researchers located 32 studies of attachment where the strange situation was used, in 8 countries

• overall the studies yielded results for 1990 children

• data was meta analysed - meaning results of the studies were combined and analysed, weighting each study for its sample size

findings

• wide variation between the proportions of attachment types

• all countries - secure attachment was the most common classification but proportion varied from 75% in britain to 50% in china

• individualist cultures - rates of insecure resistant were similar to original sample (all under 14%)

• not true for collectivist samples - in china, japan and israel the rates were above 25%

• variations between results of studies within the same countries were actually 150% greater than those between countries - eg US one study found 46% securely attached with another as high as 90%

findings image

conclusions

• patterns of attachment across cultures appear to be similar to that of the original data

• secure attachment is the most common

what do the findings support

support the idea that

• secure attachment is required for healthy social and emotional development

• attachment is an innate process

simonelli et al procedure

• conducted a study in italy

• wanted to see if proportions of babies of different attachment types matched those in previous studies

• assessed 76 babies aged 12 months using the strange situation

findings

• 50% were secure, with 36% insecure avoidant - lower rate of secure attachment and higher rate of insecure avoidant

• researchers suggest this is because increasing numbers of mothers of young children work long hours and use professional childcare

jin et al procedure

• conducted a study to compare proportions of attachment types in korea to other studies

• strange situation was used to assess 87 babies

findings

• overall proportions of insecure and secure babies were similar to those in most countries, with most secure

• however, more of those classified as insecurely attached were resistant, and only one baby avoidant

• distribution is similar to attachment types found in japan - since they have similar child rearing styles

conclusions

• secure attachment seems to be the norm in a wide range of cultures, supporting bowlbys idea that attachment is innate and universal

• however, research also clearly shows that cultural practices have an influence on attachment type

evaluation

1. cultural comparison

2. high internal validity (& CP)

3. cultural validity

4. countries not cultures

cultural comparison

• its a robust cross cultural comparison by meta-anaylsis

• 32 studies were assessed across 8 countries, looking at nearly 2000 infants

• large sample increases the reliability of the findings

high internal validity

1. standardised methodology with all 32 studies using the same method, consistency allows for accurate comparisons of attachment behaviours without EV interference

2. indigenous researchers - incl german and japanese researchers, reduces issues like language misunderstanding and researcher bias

confounding variables

• cross cultural research is affected by confounding variables

• studies conducted in different countries have variations in sample characteristics, such as poverty - factors like environmental differences (eg child rearing practices, presence of toys) could influence attachment behaviours, rather than culture itself

• makes it difficult to draw accurate cross cultural conclusions about attachment

cultural validity

same

countries not cultures

• within each country there are many different cultural variations

• van ijzendoorn found attachment within japan varied with tokyo having similar attachment styles to those of western countries, while more rural settings had larger numbers of insecure restsistant

• suggests meta-analysis findings may not be due to cultural variations

• more care is needed to assess whether a sample is representative of a culture rather than a country