cultural variations in attachment

• ijzendoorn and kroonenberg

  • conducted a study to see the proportion of secure,insecure-avoidant and insecure-resistant attachment types in different countries.
  • they also studied attachment types in countries to see differences within cultures.
  • investigated cross-cultural variation in attachment using information from previous studies using the strange situation test
• ijzendoorn and kroonenberg procedure

  The researchers studied 32 studies of attachment using the strange situation(investigates the proportion of infants of different attachment types).These studies were conducted in 8 countries:15 in the USA.Results were yielded for 1990 infants.The data was meta-analysed,results were combined and weighted for sample size.
• ijzendoorn and kroonenberg findings

  Overall there was a wide variation of proportions of attachment types in different countries.In all countries secure attachment was the most common classification.This proportion varied from 75% in Britain to 50% in China.Insecure-resistant was the least common.Insecure-avoidant was most common in Germany and least common in Japan.A unexpected finding was that variations between results within the same country were 150% greater than those between countries.In the USA,one study found only 46% securely attached compared to another sample with 90%.
• korean study: jin

  • the strange situation was used to assess 87 infants.
  • the overall proportion of secure and insecure were similar to other countries.More of those classes insecurely attached were resistant and one was avoidant.The distribution is  similar to the proportions of attachment types in Japan.This is because they have similar child-rearing styles.
• conclusion

  Secure attachment is seen as the norm in most cultures which supports Bolwby’s idea that attachment is innate and universal and this type is the universal norm.However the research shows that cultural practices also have an influence on attachment type.