Cultural variations in attachment -A-Level Psychology

Cultural variations-’culture’ refers to the norms and values that exist within a group of people.Cultural variations are the differences in norms and values that exist between different cultural groups.

Studies of cultural variations:

Key study:Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg(1988)

-conducted a study to see the proportion of secure,insecure-avoidant and insecure-resistant attachment types in different countries.

-they also studied attachment types in countries to see differences within cultures.

-investigated cross-cultural variation in attachment using information from previous studies using the strange situation test(imposed etic).

Procedure:The researchers studied 32 studies of attachment using the strange situation(investigates the proportion of infants of different attachment types).These studies were conducted in 8 countries:15 in the USA.Results were yielded for 1990 infants.The data was meta-analysed,results were combined and weighted for sample size.

Findings:Overall there was a wide variation of proportions of attachment types in different countries.In all countries secure attachment was the most common classification.This proportion varied from 75% in Britain to 50% in China.Insecure-resistant was the least common.Insecure-avoidant was most common in Germany and least common in Japan.A unexpected finding was that variations between results within the same country were 150% greater than those between countries.In the USA,one study found only 46% securely attached compared to another sample with 90%.

An Italian study:Simonella et al(2014)

-conducted a study in Italy to see if the proportions of attachment types were still the same as previous results.

-76 12 month olds were assessed using the strange situation

-50% were secure,36% were insecure avoidant.This presented a lower rate of secure attachment in comparison to other studies.They suggested that this was because of the increasing numbers of mothers of very young children working longer hours and using professional childcare.

-these findings suggest that cultural changes can produce dramatic differences to patterns of secure and insecure attachment.

An Korean study:Jin et al(2012)

-conducted a study to compare the proportions of attachment types in Korea to other countries.

-the strange situation was used to assess 87 infants.

-the overall proportion of secure and insecure were similar to other countries.More of those classes insecurely attached were resistant and one was avoidant.The distribution is  similar to the proportions of attachment types in Japan.This is because they have similar child-rearing styles.

Conclusion:

-Secure attachment is seen as the norm in most cultures which supports Bolwby’s idea that attachment is innate and universal and this type is the universal norm.However the research shows that cultural practices also have an influence on attachment type.

Evaluation:

Large sample size-by combining the results from many different countries increased the sample size.Large sample sizes are a strength because they increase internal validity as they reduce the impact of anomalous results(from bad methodology or unusual participants).2000 babies and primary attachment figures were meta analysed in the Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg study.

Method of assessment is biased-Cross cultural psychology includes ideas of etic(cultural universals) and emic(cultural uniqueness).The strange situation was designed by an American researcher (Ainsworth) based on a British theory(Bolwby’s).There is question if whether Anglo-american theories and assessments can be applied to other cultures.It can be seen as imposed etic.An example of this is the lack of pleasure on reunion may be seen as insecure attachment in the strange situation.In Germany this may be seen as independence rather than avoidance and therefore not a sign of insecurity.

The strange situation lacks validity-Kagan et al(1986) suggested that attachment type is more related to temperament than to the relationship with the primary attachment figure.In this case the strange situation can be seen to be measuring anxiety rather than attachment.

Samples tend to be unrepresentative if cultures-The meta analysis conducted by Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg claimed to study cultural variation but in reality comparisons were between countries not cultures.Each country contains many different cultures.This can lead to over or under representation of the proportion of attachment types.This means that comparisons between countries are invalid and have to be more specific with particular cultural characteristics.