Cultural variations in attachment

• evaluation - positive

  • Most studies conducted by indigineous psychologists (same cultural background as participants) - reduces bias, increases validity
• evaluation - negative

  • Impact of confounding variables (such as poverty, social class and environmental variables in studies) - so looking at attachment behaviour in non-matched studies may not tell us much
  • Imposed etic - occurs when we impose an idea/technique that works in one cultural context to another (e.g. lack of affection at reunion may be seen as avoidant attachment in Strange Situation but seen as independence in Germany)
• Ijzendoorn and Kroonberg’s research - procedure

  • 32 studies located where strange situation was used
  • studies conducted in eight countries
  • data from studies meta-analysed - results of studies combined and analysed together, each study weighted on sample size
• Ijzendoorn and Kroonberg’s research - findings

  • secure attachment mos put common classification in all countries
  • rates of insecure-resistant attachment similar to Ainsworth’s sample in internationalist cultures (under 14%)
  • rates of insecure-resistant attachment above 25% in collectivist cultures (China, Japan, Israel)
  • variations between results of studies was greater within countries than between countries (150% greater)
• Evaluation eXtra

  Competing explanations - Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg suggest that media presents a view of how parents and babies are meant to behave which may override cultural differences in the way children are brought up
• Simonelli’s research - procedure

  76 babies aged 12 months assessed using strange situation
• Simonelli’s research - findings

  50% secure, 36% avoidant (lower rate of secure and higher rate of avoidant in comparison to many studies). Suggests this is because increasing numbers of mothers work long hours and use childcare and shows patterns of attachment vary in line with cultural change
• Kyoung Jin’s research - procedure

  Strange situation used to assess 87 babies in korea
• Kyoung Jin’s research - findings

  Most babies securely attached, similar to most countries, but those classified as insecurely attached were mostly avoidant (one was resistant). Distribution very similar to attachment types found in Japan