cultural variations

• what was van ijzendoorn and kroonenbergs aim?

  they were interested to see whether there would be evidence that inter-cultural differences did exist, i.e. differences between different countries/cultures. they were also interested to find out where there were intra-cultural differences - differences in the findings from studies conducted within the same culture
• what was van ijzendoorn and kroonenbergs method?

  a meta-analysis was conducted on the findings from 32 studies of attachment behaviour. altogether the studies examined over 2,000 strange situation classifications in eight different countries
• what are the key patterns in the results?

  the differences are small. secure attachment is the most common classification in every culture, then insecure-avoidant then insecure-resistant except for in israel and japan - two collectivist cultures at the time
• what are the conclusions of the meta-analysis?

  the global pattern across cultures appears to be similar to that found in the u.s.. secure attachment is the ‘norm’ - it is the most common form of attachment in all countries. this supports the idea that secure attachment is ’best’ for healthy social and emotional development. these cultural similarities support the view that attachment is an innate and biological process
• what is the strength of cultural variations?

  meta-analysis
• what is the counter of cultural variations?

  sampling issues - representativeness
• what is the alternative of cultural variations?

  are universals due to biological influences or the media
• what are the issues and debates of cultural variations?

  culture bias (rothbaum et al)
• what did rothbaum et al (2000) do?

  argued attachment theory and research is not relevant to other cultures because it is rooted in american culture. e.g. ‘competence’ in japanese children is based on group-orientated skills and the inhibition of emotional responses: in usa it is based on individuation
• what did grossman and grossman (1991) do?

  german children tend to be classified as insecurely rather than securely attached. may be due to different child rearing practices. german culture involves keeping some interpersonal distance between parents and children, so infants do not engage in proximity seeking behaviours - thus appear to be insecurely attached
• what did takahashi (1960) do?

  used the strange situation to study 60 middle-class japanese infants and their mothers. found similar rates of secure attachment as ainsworth. however, the japanese children showed no insecure-avoidant and high rates of insecure-resistant (32%). also japanese children were distressed at being alone (in 90% of cases they were so distressed the observation stopped at this point). this cultural variation may be down to child rearing patterns (children rarely independent from mums in japanese culture). this would make them appear to be insecurely attached.