cultural variations

• Studies of cultural variations
• van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg's research

  Marinus van IJzendoorn and Peter Kroonenberg (1988) conducted a study to look at the proportions of secure, insecure-avoidant and insecure-resistant attachments across a range of countries to assess cultural variation. They also looked at the differences within the same countries to get an idea of variations within a culture.
• Procedure


  The researchers located 32 studies of attachment where the Strange Situation had been used to investigate the proportions of babies with different attachment types. These were conducted in eight countries - 15 were in the US. Overall the studies yielded results for 1990 children. The data for these 32 studies was meta-analysed. This means that the results of the studies were combined and analysed together, weighting each study for its sample size.
• Findings
• Findings


  • There was wide variation between the proportions of attachment types in different studies in all countries. Secure attachment was the most common classification, but the proportion varied from 75% in Britain to 60% in China. In individualist cultures, rates of insecure-resistant attachment were similar to Ainsworth's original sample (all under 15%), but this was not true for the collectivist samples from China, Japan and Israel where rates were above 25% (and where rates of insecure-avoidant attachment were reduced).
• An interesting finding was that variations between results of studies within the same country were actually 150% greater than those between countries. In the US for example, one study found only 46% securely attached compared to one sample as high as 90%.
• Italian study


  Alessandra Simonelli et al. (2013) conducted a study in Italy to see whether the proportions of babies of different attachment types still matches those found in previous studies. They found 50% were secure, with 36% insecure-avoidant. This is a lower rate of secure attachment and higher rate of insecure-avoidant attachment than has been found in many studies. The researchers suggest this is because increasing numbers of mothers of very young children work long hours and use professional childcare.
• These findings suggest that patterns of attachment types are not static but vary in line with cultural change.
• Korean study


  • Mi Kyoung Jin et al. (2012) conducted a study to compare the proportions of attachment types in Korea to other studies. The overall proportions of insecure and secure babies were similar to those in most countries, with most babies being secure. However, more of those classified as insecurely attached were resistant and only one baby was avoidant. This distribution is similar to the distribution of attachment types found in Japan (van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg 1988). Since Japan and Korea have quite similar child-rearing styles, this similarity might be explained in terms of child-rearing style.