Cultural Differences

• Van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg carried out meta-analysis of 32 studies with over 2000 strange situation classifications in 8 countries
• Van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg found that secure attachment is the norm
• Van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg found that individualist cultures had more insecure-avoidant children, whereas collectivist cultures had more insecure-resistant children
• V&K found that there was 1.5x more variation within cultures than between them
• The most insecure-resistant countries were Israel, Japan & China
• The most insecure-avoidant country was Germany
• Tronick (1992) found that in an African tribe children were looked after by different women but slept with their mother at night, and still showed one primary attachment after 6 months, supporting Bowlby's theory of monotropy
• Collectivist culture is a community that prioritizes the group over the individual, valuing interdependence by sharing tasks and child-rearing
• Individualist culture is a culture that prioritizes the importance of individuals and values independence & privacy
• Meta-analysis is a method of data analysis where researchers look at findings from multiple studies and produce an overall statistic
• Global culture means that the effects of mass media mean the world is exposed to similar influences, rather than innate biological factors
• There are many subcultures within each country so it is difficult to generalise about the whole country
• The strange situation technique was developed in the USA so may not have validity in other countries