Cultural variation in attachment

• A collectivist culture empathises on group effort, interpersonal development and less anti-social behaviour
• A individualist culture empathises on personal achievement, independence and more anti-social behaviour
• Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg 1988 conducted a large scare meta-analysis where they analysed the results of 32 separate studies in 8 countries which used strange situation.
• In Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg study 2000 babies were studied
• They concluded secure attachment was the most common attachment type in all countries AND insecure resistent was least common
• With secure attachment being most common, it suggests attachment is innate and biological and babies are born knowing to attach.
• Lowest percentage of securely attached was found in China and highest in Great Britain
• Insecure avoidant was most common in Germany and least commonly in Japan
• Insecure Resistent was least common type but found mostly in Israel, Japan and China
• An advantage of this study is that it has large samples
• The study is a large sample as it is of 2000 bbabies - increasing internal validity
• A disadvantage of the study is that samples tend to be unrepresentative of culture
• The study is unrepresentative of culture as to comparisons were between countries not cultures. In countries there may be more than one culture