Attachment - Cultural Variations

• what are cultural variations?

  the way that different types of attachments vary within groups, cultures

  
  

  collective vs individualistic cultures
• who conducted a study on cultural variations?

  van ldjendoorn and kroonenberg 1988
• what was the aim of van ldjendoorn and kroonenberg 1988 experiment?

  look at proportions of secure, insecure avoidant and resistant attachments across a range of countries.
• procedure


  located 32 studies where the strange situation had been used

  
  

  these studies were conducted in 8 countries

  
  

  sample: 1990 children

  
  

  used meta analysis to analyse data from other studies and calculated average percentage for different attachment styles
• findings

  secure attachment is common between countries/cultures

  
  

  secure attachment was highest in Great Britain (75%)

  
  

  avoidant attachment was mostly common in west germany than any other western culture (35.3%)

  
  

  resistant attachment was common in japan (27.1%)
• Grossmann et al 1985


  German parents seek independent, non clingy infants who obey parent commands
• why is resistant attachment common in japan?

  collectivist country - children are rarely left by their mothers
• why is secure attachment common in US and Britain?

  US and Britain are individualistic countries which encourage independence, not being reliant on others

  
  

  children are used to being away from parents (daycare)
• evaluation - strengths

  - high reliability = uses strange situation as a procedure so comparison can be made between cultures

  
  

  - meta-analysis = includes large samples so unusual results have a small effect on overall results increasing validity

  
  

  - conclusions significantly developed our understanding of the different child rearing practises and how they can affect our child's attachment type
• evaluation - weaknesses


  - not globally representative = Africa, South America, Eastern European socialist countries were not represented

  
  

  - findings are misleading due to disproportionate number of studies e.g in the USA the study was conducted 18/32 times which was more compared to other countries like Great Britain which was conducted 1/32 times which distorts the findings

  
  

  - culturally biased = strange situation was developed in america it may be more suitable for western cultures, attachment behaviour differs for each culture so may lack validity when used to compare samples from non-western cultures