Cultural variations in attachment

What did van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg research?

Looked at proportions of secure, avoidant and resistant attachments across a range of countries to assess cultural variations + differences within the same country to see variations between cultures

What was van Ijendoorn & Kroonenberg’s procedure?

Meta-analysed 32 Strange Situation studies across 8 countries (15 in US) to investigate proportions of attachment

What did van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg find?

• In all countries, secure attachment was the most common classification (50% China - 75% Britain)

• In individualist cultures, rates of insecure-resistant attachment was under 14%, whereas collectivist cultures was above 25%.

• Variations within the same country were 150% greater than between countries - one study in the US found 90% securely attached whilst another found 46%.

What happened in the Italian Strange Situation study?

• Simonelli et al. (2014) found 50% secure, 36% insecure-avoidant.

• Lower rate of secure and higher rate of insecure-avoidant than other studies.

• Researchers suggest this is because of increasing numbers of mothers of very young children having to work long hours and using professional healthcare.

• Findings suggest patterns of attachment type vary in line with cultural change.

What happened in the Korean Strange Situation study?

• Mi Kyoung Jin et al. (2012) found that there were more insecurely-resistant than avoidant

• This distribution was similar to Japans’ - both countries have similar child-rearing styles

How does secure attachment support Bowlby?

• Bowlby saw attachment was innate and universal.

• Secure attachment is the universal norm across a wide range of cultures

Why is the findings of this meta-analysis valid?

• Studies were conducted by indigenous psychologists, meaning problems with cross-cultural research (misunderstanding language, biases due to stereotypes) were avoided.

Why may some data have been affected by cross-cultural affects?

Morelli and Tronick (1991) were outsiders from the US who studied attachment in Zaire - data may have been affected by researchers gathering data outside their own culture

What confounding variables were there in van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg’s research?

Studies conducted in different countries are usually not matched methodologically when compared in meta-analyses

What cross-cultural limitations are there with van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg’s meta-analysis?

• Cross-cultural psychology includes the emic (cultural uniqueness) and etic (cross-cultural universality).

• Imposed etic: presuming a technique will work in one culture because it works in another.

• Strange Situation was engineered for US and UK, where lack of reunion behaviour may indicate avoidant attachment - in Germany, this same behaviour may be interpreted as independence rather than security - therefore, Strange Situation may not work in Germany.

• Suggests behaviours measured in Strange Situation may not have the same meanings in different cultural contexts.