Cultural Variations

• Van Ijzendoorn argued that a stable network of adults could provide better care than one mother
• Emic = 'cultural uniqueness'
• Etic = 'cross-cultural universality'
• Give two examples of cultural variation studies into attachment.

  • Van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg - did a meta-analysis of 32 studies in 8 countries which looked into the proportions of attachment types
  • Simonella et al. - Italian study where the strange situation was used to measure attachment in 70 6-12 month-old babies
• One of the biggest criticisms aimed at Ainsworth's original study was that it was ethnocentric, only using a US sample.

  Over the next few decades, the Strange Situation was replicated across other countries and the data were examined to see just how much of Ainsworth's work could be applied to other countries and cultures.

  The largest was conducted by the Dutch psychologist Van Ijzendoorn.
• 𝗩𝗮𝗻 𝗜𝗷𝘇𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗼𝗼𝗿𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗞𝗿𝗼𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗻𝗯𝗲𝗿𝗴:

  • Conducted a meta-analysis of strange situation experiments that other researchers had conducted across the globe
  • The use of meta-analysis here was an advantage as it meant that Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg did not have the time and costs associated with travel as well as cultural and language barriers
  • They took 32 studies from 8 countries to gain an idea of attachment types in other cultures
• A meta-analysis is when you take the work of several other researchers and combine their data/findings to come to conclusions of your own.
• 𝙁𝙄𝙉𝘿𝙄𝙉𝙂𝙎:

  • Secure attachment is the most commonly found attachment type in all countries studied
  • Insecure Avoidant is the second most common attachment type in Western/individualistic societies
  • Insecure Resistant is the second most common attachment type in non-Western/collectivist societies
• As the research has a large sample from a variety of places,  it can be said to be representative and, therefore, generalisable
• Meta-analysis allows the researchers to obtain data from countries where language and cultural barriers may have been an issue i.e. China and Japan
• It is hard to check the validity of some of the studies as the researchers have no way of knowing if the data was collected in a scientific manner
• There are a lot of countries, as well as continents, missing (including Africa and a lot of Asia)
• There is an imbalance of studies used: There are so many for the US that those results are also the mean for the whole study
• The Chinese study only had 25 infants, so we are using a tiny sample to represent around 20% of the global population
• Germany had the highest proportion of Insecure-Avoidant attachments (individualistic culture).
• Japan and Israel had the highest numbers of Insecure-Resistant attachments (collectivist cultures).