Cultural variations

• CULTURE= shared beliefs and values
• COLLECTIVIST= group effort, interpersonal development, and anti-social behaviour
• INDIVIDUALISTIC= personal achievement, praising initiative and independence and more anti-social behaviour, a strong sense of competition
• VAN IJZENDOORN AND KROONENBERG 1958

  AIM- look at proportions of attachment across a range of countries
• PROCEDURE

  • meta-analysis on 32 studies using SS
  • 18 countries, 18 in USA, 1 in China
  • over 2000 babies studied
• FINDINGS

  • secure attachment is most common
  • Germany had the highest number of avoidant children
  • Japan had very few avoidant children, a high proportion of resistant children
  • GB, US, and Japan are individualistic
• TAKAHASHI 1990

  • 60 one-year-olds, middle-class Japanese families observed in SS
  • no infants classified as insecure avoidant
  • 32 percent insecure resistant, 68 percent secure attachment
  • children are distressed when left alone
  • IMPOSED ETIC= when an observer attempts to generalise observations from one culture to another
• INDIGENOUS THEORIES

  • Rothbaum et al suggest that the benefit of research is that psychologists should be able to produce a set of of Indigenous theories
  • Posada and Jacobs gathered a lot of evidence that supports the universality of attachment from many countries
• ETHNOCENTRISM= tendency to believe that one's ethnic or cultural group is centrally important