cultural variations in attachment

• van izjendoorn procedure

  conducted a large scale meta-analysis of 2000 infants in 32 studies from 8 countries; each study classified the attachment types of infants and mothers using the 'strange situation'
• findings: general: secure attachment was the most common type in all countries. insecure resistant was the least common type. avoidant was more common in individualistic western cultures and resistant in collectivist cultures
• germany had the most insecure-avoidant infants (35%)

  Japan (27%) had the most insecure resistant
• suggests: as secure attachment is the most common type, there is a globally preferred attachment style which potentially has a biological basis. there are cultural variations. for example german families encourage independent 'avoidant' behaviour, japanese mothers spend significant time with infants, explaining extreme 'resistant' reactions
• ainsworths and van izjendoorns findings may lack temporal validity. simonelli et al found fewer secure and more avoidant infants in modern italian families due to the changing nature of family life
• as the dominant attachment style was 'secure' for all countries studied, this may be evidence for bowlby's theory that there is a biological, instinctive drive to parent in a way that produces secure attachments
• many of the countries represented only had one study included; such as a small sample is not representative of the country's population; for example, the sample may have over-represented groups such as urban infants
• this meta-analysis included a very large sample; a strength of this is any poorly conducted study or unusual results only have a small effect on the overall results, increasing confidence in the validity of the findings
• using the strange situation to assess attachments in non-western countries may be an example of ethnocentrism. it may suffer from cultural bias as secure style of attachment are more common in western culture