cultural variations in attachment

• Cultural variation of attachment

  All the rules, customs, morals and ways of interacting that bring together members of society
• 'Culture' doesn't mean the same thing as a 'country' or even the term 'society'
• Many different cultural groups within their own rules and customs may coexist in a country or society- These are called subcultures
• Western - individualist


  • Emphasis is on personal achievements
  • Focus on developing initiative in infants
  • Mother reacts favourably to independence
  • More anti-social behaviour - crime directed to authority figures
• Non western - collectivist


  • Emphasis is on group effort cooperation = dependant
  • Focus on interpersonal development of infants
  • More favourable reaction to obedience and social behaviour
  • Less and social behaviours
• Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonberg (1988)


  Conducted a meta-analysis of 32 studies that used the strange situation across 8 countries. This included a total of 1990 children
• The countries were: Great Britain, Sweden, Japan, Netherlands, United states, Israel, germany and china.
• In all countries secure attachment was the most common. Varied from 75% to 50%
• In individualistic cultures rates of insecure resistance were the same as in Ainsworth's study. However in collectivist cultures rates where above 25%
• findings - van ljzendoorn

  avoidant more likely in western cultures - resistant more likely in non-collectivist cultures

  • germany had most avoidant infants (35%)
  • japan had most insecure resistant (27%)
  • china had lowest secure (less than 50%)
• van ljenzdoor research suggests

  secure attachment most common - most globally prefered- biological basis ?

  • germany - families encourage independent behaviour
  • japan - spend more time with their infants
• Temporal validty - van ljzendoorn


  changing nature of family life - simonelli et al (2014) - secure less and avoidant more when testing strange situation. - suggests new coping mechanisms due to modern life and baby adjusting to absent mother
• dominant attachment was secure in most countries

  evidence for bowlby's theory that there is biological drive for parents to form a secure attachment
• only one study for some countries in van ljzendoorns meta analysis

  sample may have over-represented certain populations e.g poverty

  there are different cultures in a country - not representative of entire country
• ljzendoor - meta analysis vary large sample

  any poorly conducted studies only have small affect on result - increasing validity on overall findings
• ethnocentrism by using the strange situation


  culture bias as these attachment types are more common in wesrern culture - these veiw secure as superior - shouldnt use emic conccept by etic (universal)