cultural variations

• Bowlby’s evoltionary theory

  secure attachments should dominate in all cultures, with equal amounts of insecure-avoidant and insecure-resistant types.
• Belsky (1999)  - evolutionary explanation for similar attachment types in different cultures.


  Insecure attachment types = associated with weak adult relationships and early sexual activity,

  • could be useful in circumstances such as famine where the need for rapid reproduction arises.
• Mi-Kyoung (2005) - Korean vs American infants


  • Compared 87 Korean and 113 American families.
  • Korean infants did not stay close to their mothers and when their mothers returned, they were more likely to play with their infants.
  • securely attached infants proportion was similar in both cultures.

  This indicates that different child rearing practices could lead to secure attachment.
• Malin (1997) - Australian aboriginal infants


  discouraged from exploring because of the threats and distractions of food. So they tend to stay close to their mothers, and use them as secure bases.

  • these infants were incorrectly labeled as insecurely attached and many were placed in care.
• Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg - meta-analysis process


  • looked at attachment types across a range of countries.
  • located 32 studies of attachment using 8 countries
  • results for 1990 children
• Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg - meta-analysis findings


  secure attachment = most common for all countries varied from

  • 75% in Britain to 50% in China

  insecure resistant:

  • individualist cultures = similar to Ainsworth sample
  • collectivist (China, Japan, Israel) above 25% but lowest insecure avoidant
• Simoneli et al - Italian study 


  assessed 76 babies aged 12 months compared to previous studies found:

  • 50% secure
  • 36% insecure avoidant

  increasing number of Mothers of very young children work long hours use professional childcare
• large sample size: pro


  • meta-analysis (total of nearly 2,000 babies and PAF)
  • increase internal validity
  • reduce impact of anomalous results caused by bad methodology or very unusual participants
• indigenous researchers 


  • most studies conducted by indigenous psychologists from same cultural background as pps
  • avoid potential problems like misunderstandings of language/ stereotypes
  • enhanced validity of data
• Jin et al - korean study


  similar rates of insecure and secure attach babies but higher insecure resistant and only one avoidant
• Kagan et al - temperament


  temperament is more related to attachment than relationships with PAF

  • strange situation may be measuring anxiety rather than attchment