Cultural variations in attachments

What is the procedure of Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg’s cross cultural meta analysis of attachments?

Comparison of 32 studies in 8 countries involving 1990 children and their caregivers in total

What did Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg find about attachments in general and secure ones?

Wide variation of attachment types between countries, and an even wider variation within coutnries

In all countries secure is most common: 75% in UK range to 50% in China

What did Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg find about insecure attachments across cultures?

Resistant: individualist cultures rates were under 14% similar to Ainsworth’s study, compared to collectivist cultures (China, Israel)where rates were above 25%

What did Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg find about intra cultural attachment variation?

Variations between results of studies within the same country was 150% greater than those between countries

-in US 1 sample going only 46% babies were securely attached while another found 90%

Why does the fact that Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg’s study is a meta analysis increase the confidence in their data?

There is a large sample and large amounts of studies use so effects of anomalies are reduced thus conclusions are less likely to be a fluke

How does the countries chosen in Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg’s meta analysis reduce its population validity?

Out of the 32 studies meta analysed, 18 of them were from the USA while only 1-4 studies of other countries were used, reducing the validity of conclusions drawn about cultural variations as samples from other countries are unrepresentative

What is it a strength that many studies in Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg’s meta analysis are conducted by indigenous researchers?

It means that researchers can tailor the Strange situation procedure to their own culture, for instance rewriting instructions in their own language, reducing potential variables like language misunderstandings of the researchers of participants

Therefore there is an excellent chance researchers and participants communicated successfully thus enhance validity of data collected

What are some confounding variables that may cause variations in distribution of attachment types other than culture that aren’t controlled in Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg’s study?

-social economic backgrounds like poverty

-size of room, set up of room and availability of interesting toys (babies could explore more in smaller rooms with more interesting toys)

-could potentially lead to inaccurate conclusions as studies aren’t matched for methodology so they might not tell us anything about cross cultural patterns of attachment

What is the strange situation paradigm?

Using Ainsworth’s structured observational research tool to assess and measure attachment quality

How could infant behaviours across cultures in Strange Situation procedure be misinterpreted leading to an imposed etic?

-in Japan mothers and babies are rarely separated so the baby’s distress upon separation which is a normal secure reaction can be incorrectly classed as a resistant attachment type

-in Germany babies are separated more often so their lack of affection could be seen as avoidant type when it is interpreted as independence since they trust the caregiver to come back

What does Simonelli’s study find about attachments in Italy and what do they suggest?

-she found that 50% were secure and 36% were avoidant

-could be due to increasing no. of mothers working long hours and using professional childcare

-patterns of attachment types are not static and vary in line with cultural change

What did Jin’s study find about attachments in Korea?

Secure is the norm, substantial minority of resistant, which is similar to that of Japan

Could be due to the fact both Korea and Japan have similar child rearing styles