Cultural variations in attachment

• What are cultural variations?

  The ways that different groups of people vary in terms of their social practices e.g. childrearing and the effect these practices have on the development of attachment types.
• What does culture mean?


  The shared beliefs, values, customs and behaviours of members of a particular social group. We refer to these as 'social norms'.
• What are the 2 types of culture?

  • Collectivist cultures
  • Individualist cultures
• What are the features of collectivist cultures?

  Group effort, interpersonal development and less anti-social behaviours.
• What are the features of individualist cultures?

  Personal achievement, praising initiative and independence and more anti-social behaviours.
• What did Van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg do?

  They completed a meta-analysis on 32 studies using Mary Ainsworth's 'strange situation' involving a total of over 2000 babies. The studies came from 8 different countries.
• Who completed a meta-analysis on babies using the 'strange situation'?

  Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg
• What were the main findings of the VI & K meta-analysis?

  • Secure attachment was the most common attachment style in all cultures
  • Countries varied in whether resistant or avoidant insecure attachment was the more common of the insecure attachment styles
  • Differences in attachment styles were found to be more common within cultures than between different cultures
• What was special about the German findings in the VI & K meta-analysis?

  They had a high percentage of avoidant resistant attachments, typical of independent children. It was said that this is because German parents tend to raise independent children who do not rely on their parents.
• What was special about the Japanese findings in the VI & K meta-analysis?

  They had higher levels of insecure resistant attachments. Traditionally Japanese infants aren't separated from the mother for very long, so for these infants all stages of the 'strange situation' would be very stressful to them.
• What was the Simonella et al study?


  An Italian study which observed 76 babies in the 'strange situation'. They found 36% had avoidant attachment styles, which was higher than previous data for Italy. This suggests cultural changes over time e.g. an increase in mothers returning to work after giving birth.
• What was the Van Ijzendoorn and Sagi study?


  They found attachment styles in Tokyo were very similar to those of infants reared in the West, whereas infants raised in rural Japan were found to have a much more resistant attachment style. This highlights the variation between cultures.
• What is a strength of the VI & K meta-analysis?

  It had a very large sample (more than 2000 babies) which would reduce the effect of anomalous results or studies that poorly implemented the 'strange situation'.
• What are the weaknesses of the VI & K meta-analysis?

  • Validity - infants have their own temperaments & so would react differently regardless of relationship with caregiver & some babies are more/less familiar with similar situations to the 'strange situation'
  • Culturally biased - 'strange situation' was created in Western countries to test Western attachment styles. May incorrectly estimate the styles of attachments of other cultures
  • Variations within countries - some studies were smaller and some countries had more studies done within them which makes the data unreliable for each country