Cultural variations

• Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg

  • conducted a meta-analysis of 32 studies of the strange situation over 8 countries
• Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg

  Findings:

  • wide variation between the proportions of attachment types
  • in all countries the most common attachment style was secure
  • insecure avoidant was higher in individualist cultures
  • insecure resistant was higher in collectivist cultures
• Italian study

  Simonella - compared their research using the strange situaiton with that of previous studies
• Italian study

  • found a lower rate of secure attachment
  • possibly because of the increase in working mothers and using childcare
• Korean study

  Jin - used strange situation to compare attachment types in Korea to other countries
• Korean study

  • overall found similar secure:insecure ratios to other countries
  • nearly all insecure babies were insecure resistant
  • similar to Japan's results which reflects their similar child rearing styles
• Conclusions:

  • secure attachment seems to be the norm in a wide range of countries (supporting Bowlby)
  • culrtural practices do have an influence on attachment type
• (Cultural variations) + Large samples

  • conducting meta-analysis results in a lot of data which increases its internal validity by reducing the impact of anomalies
  • the cross cultural data makes it easier for the results to be generalised globally
• (Cultural variations) - Unrepresentative of culture

  • although the meta-analysis claimed to study cultural variation, the comparisons were actually between country not culture
• (Cultural variations) - Biased method of assessment

  • the SS was designed by an American based off of a British theory (Bowlby) which questions whether the Anglo-American theories can be applied to other cultures or whether that is classed as imposed etic (cultural bias)