Cultural Variations in Attachment

Van Ijzendoorn (1988) Procedure:

Conducted a large scale meta analysis of 2000 infants in 32 studies from 8 countries, each study classified the attachment types of infants and mothers using the ‘strange situation’

Van Ijzendoorn (1988) General Findings:

Secure attachment was the most common type in all countries, and generally insecure resistant was the least common type. Avoidant was more common in individualistic Western cultures and resistant in collectivist non-western. There was more variation within countries than between countries.

Van Ijzendoorn (1988) Statistics

• Germany had the most insecure avoidant infants (35%)

• Japan (27%) had the most insecure resistant

• China had the least secure infants (50%)

• The UK had 22% avoidant, 75% secure and 3% resistant

What does Van Ijzendoorn’s (1988) research suggest?

Secure attachment was the most common type in all countries, this suggests there is a globally preferred attachment style which potentially has a biological bias

Van Ijzendoorn’s (1988) - Variations in parenting styles

• German families encourage independent/non-clingy behaviour, resulting in infants that show little distress and more German children are classified as avoidant

• Japanese mothers spend significant time with their infants, explaining extreme ‘resistant’ reactions to separation

AO3 - Temporal validity

Ainsworth and Van Ijzendoorn’s findings lack temporal validity due to the changing nature of family life in the modern world. Simonelli et al (2014) measured attachment using the strange situation in modern Italian infant mother pairs. It was found that compared to historical Italian families, there was a significantly lower % of secure infants and a significantly higher percentage of avoidant infants. This suggests change is a healthy coping mechanism due to the demands of modern life, with infants adjusting to a frequently absent mother by not constantly showing extreme emotion when separated

AO3 - Provides evidence for Bowlby

As the dominant attachment style was ‘secure’ for all countries studied, this may be evidence for Bowlby’s theory that there is a biological, instinctive drive to parent in a way that produces secure attachments

AO3 - Unrepresentative sample

Many of the countries represented only had one study included, such as small sample is not representative of the country’s population, eg the sample may have over-represented groups such as urban infants or those in poverty. The fact that cultures infants are not homogenous is demonstrated by the finding there was more variation within countries than between countries

AO3 - Use of a meta-analysis

Van Ijzendoorn used a meta-analysis which included a very large sample, a strength of this is any poorly conducted or unusual results only have a small effect on the overall results, increasing confidence in the validity of overall findings

AO3 - Ethnocentrism

Using the strange situation to assess attachments in non-western countries may be an example of ethnocentrism. The strange situation may suffer from cultural bias as styles of attachment more common in American and British culture are viewed as superior ‘secure’ and types that are more common in other cultures are labelled ‘insecure’. This could be Ainsworth taking an emic concept (local norm) and imposing it as an etic (universal) concept to the wider world