Cultural variations of attachment

• What did Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg want to study?

  The cultural variation of the different attachment types found by Ainsworth
• What was the procedure of Ijzendoor and Kroonenberg's study?

  • 32 studies of attachment where the strange situation had been used to investigate the proportions of babies with different attachment types
  • Conducted in 8 different countries
• What were the findings of Ijzendoor and Kroonenberg's study?

  • There were wide variations of the attachment types in different studies
  • In all countries secure attachment was the most common (75% Britain 50% China)
  • In individualist cultures - rates of insecure-resistant attachment were similar to Ainsworth
• What were the findings of the Italian study by Alessandra et al?

  Out of 76 babies, 50% were secure and 36% insecure-avoidant

  This suggests that patterns of attachment vary in line with cultures
• How is the fact that the studies were conducted by indigenous researchers act like a strength?

  Many potential problems can be avoided (eg. language barrier & stereotypes)

  • This increases the validity of the studies
• How do confounding variables act as a limitation to these studies?

  Studies conducted in different countries are not usually matched for methodology when they're compared in reviews/ meta-analyses

  • Enviornmental factors - size of the room, availability of interesting toys
• How have these studies have imposed etic? (Limitation)

  The researchers assume that the concept of the styles of attachment are the same for all cultures

  Eg. an avoidant attachment style in the USA is likely to be seen as independence in Germany rather than insecurity

  • This means that such behaviours studied in the Strange Situation may not have the same meanings in different cultural contextd