cultural variations in attachment

• state the procedure behind VI and K's meta analysis

  • 2000 strange situations
  • from 32 studies of attachment behaviours
  • 8 different countries
  • wanted to identify intercultural and intracultural differences between attachment types
• what were the findings of VI and K's study?

  • intracultural differences 1.5 x higher than inter-cultural differences
  • secure attachment was most common in all countries
  • insecure resistant was more common than avoidant in Israel and Japan
  • concluded that secure attachment was most common type across cultures- it's innate
  • Japan and Israel classified as collectivist, so types of attachment probably more likely to be seen as resistant because collectivist culture is different to individualistic
  • strongest attachments still formed with mother
  • cultural variations in attachment types
• describe other cultural studies of attachment

  • GROSSMAN AND GROSSMAN- higher levels of insecure attachment amongst German infants than in other cultures. Could be due to the different childbearing practises as German mothers keep interpersonal distance from infants, so infants don't engage in proximity-seeking behaviours in the SS
  • TAKAHASHI- 60 middle class Japanese infants- showed no rates of avoidant but high of resistant (32%), so distressed at separation that for 90% of infants the study had to be stopped. Could be because in Japan kids rarely experience separation from their mothers
• evaluation of cultural variations in attachment?

  • ☹️global cultural influence- VI and K concluded that some cultural differences explained by mass media, so cultural similarities across cultures may not be innate biological influences but global culture
  • ☹️cross-cultural research- strange situation is an American measurement of attachment, in Japanese culture, dependence not independence = strength. Cultural bias
  • 😊support using other studies (Takahashi and Grossmann and Grosmann)
  • 😊supports monotropy- secure attachment is most common as it's innate and the norm
  • 😊strange situation high reliability- 0.94 inter-rater reliability