cultural variations

• aim of cultural variation study

  Van ljzndoorn and kroonenberg

  • Aims To investigate attachment types across cultures and see how the three main attachment styles applied.
• This was a meta-analysis of existing Strange Situation studies , examined over 2000 strange situations in 8 countries 

  investigating cultural variations
•  intra- cultural differences

  • cultural differences between individuals, all of whom belong to the same, larger cultural group
  • They speculated this was because of Difference in socioeconomic factors eg some super rich some poor
  • was 1.5 x greater than cross cultural variation 
• inter-cultural diferences

  • differences between those in seperate cultures/countries
  • Across all cultures secure attachcment were the norm 
  • Uk had the highest proportion of secure aatchmets 75%, 
  • Chinese had the lowest rate of secure attachments 50%
  • Germany had higher avoidant than resistant 
  • Japan and israel had a higher incidence of resistant than avoidant
• similiarities to og study

  Globa;l pattern is similar to that of the US in regards to secure attachment being widely most common
• There are strengths to using a meta-analysis to investigate cultural differences. First being such a large sample of studies analysed(2000 infants 8 countries) statistically increases the robustness of data and means that the data and conclusions drawn have high population are likely to be representative of the attachment types across the whole population. Furthermore There is less chance of bias confounding the results due to the use of secondary data. The researchers )ljzedoorrn were not the ones who directly observed the infants so they cannot have influenced the outcome in any way ensuring the absence of observer bias within the meta-analysis. Therefore a meta-analysis can be an appropriate and reliable way in determining cultural variations
• • However there are also criticisms of the methods used by lzjendoor n. The use of secondary data within meta analysis means that the researchers cannot be 100% confident as to the degree of precision exercised by the original researchers
  • They have no control over how researchers chose of operationalise key variables such as the measurement of stranger anxiety and seperation in each study. not conducted in the same locations due to many cultures, its inevitable the enviornment won't be completely consistent raising question of whether all of the data used is comparable This limits the reliability of the cultural variations findings to some extent.
  • OTOH because is a standardised procedure it should be able to be accurately replicated which minimises variation as much as possible in the method establishes it can be a reliable method for testing attachment behaviorus across cultures
• one weakness was that the study was not as globally representative as it seems, they recognised data from less western oreinted cultures were required to establish a more global perspective attachment classifications. It was pointed out taht south american, african and eastern european

  therefore this undemrines the overall population validiaty of the study as ir doesn't cover the patterns of atathcment types in these socialst cultures. Furthermore the overall findings and misleading in relation to actual cultural similarities as a disprotportionat number of the studies reviewed were conducted america which this remianinge htnocentric bias would have distorted the overall fidnings, this means the apparent consistency (in secure atatchments) between culture may not genuinely reflect how much types vary between cultures