Cultural variations in attachment

Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg - cultural variations in attachment styles

• Meta analysis if 32 studies which used strange situation to measure attachment behavior

• Research from 8 different countries was used: UK, USA, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, Israel, China, Japan

• 32 studies yielded for 1990 children

• Findings: Secure attachment most common in all nations. Insecure-avoidant most common in Western cultures, insecure resistant in non western. Variation within cultures was 1.5x greater than variation between cultures

• Conclusion: Because secure attachment was most common everywhere, it suggests this may be an innate characteristic. The variations in insecure attachment suggest culture may play a part. Findings show it’s wrong to assume each country uses the same child rearing practices, as there are many subcultures and different pracitices

1st evaluation point

• Mostly use strange situation as a research tool

• It has been found to have high inter rater reliability. Bick: found it as high as 0.94

• Because it is a highly standardised research with carefully controlled conditions easy to replicate

• As it is a meta analysis, it won’t be an exact replication, but a very high inter rater reliability suggests we can be confident with the attachment type the infant is classified as

2nd evaluation point

• Uses strange situation as a tool to measure attachment - it is ethnocentric (designed in america to assess american kids)

• Rothbaum: asked American and Japanese mothers how they’d interpret it if their child called for them during naptime. American mothers saw it as bad behavior, testing their boundaries. Japanese mothers saw this as positive and a sign of secure attachment

• Infants who showed clingy behavior would be regarded as insecure attachment signs in Western cultures, but its a healthy adjustment in Japan

• Findings found by Van, Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg and Sagi lack external validity, decreasing its importance, as it would be incorrect to assume that Japan has higher levels of insecure attachment, as different signs are interpreted differently in different countries.

3rd evaluation point

• Lacks population validity

• 27/32 studies carried out in western cultures, 1 in China, 2 in Japan, and none in African countries

• Mesman et al: Gusii in rural Kenya expressed sensitive responding to their kids in phsyical ways rather than verbal

• This study isn’t a true cross-cultural study with most being in Western cultures and none in African where child rearing is expressed in different ways to Western countries, which needs to be considered when drawing conclusions from findings.