4.1.3 CULTURAL VARIATIONS

Question 1

what was one of the biggest criticisms of Ainsworth’s orginal study?

Answer 1

it was ethnocentric
only using a US sample

Question 2

what did Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg want to investigate?

Answer 2

if attachment styles are universal across cultures / culturally specific due to traditions / social environment / beliefs about children

Question 3

what did Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988) do?

Answer 3

• conducted a meta-analysis of strange situation experiments that other researchers had conducted across the globe
  -> this is when you take the work of several other researchers and combine their data / findings to come to conclusions of their own
• was an advantage =
  -> less time and costs associated with travel
  -> no cultural and language barriers
• took 32 studies from 8 countries to gain an idea of attachment types in other cultures
• calculated the average % for the different attachment styles

Question 4

what did they find?

Answer 4

• secure attachment (B) was the majority of infants (70%)
• lowest % of secure attachments was shown in China
• highest % was in Great Britain
• Eastern countries that are more culturally close
  -> like Japan
  -> had quite high levels of insecure resistant
• expection was China
  -> there was an equal number of avoidant and resistant infants

Question 5

what were the mean % of attachment types across the world?

Answer 5

Type B
- 65%

Type A
- 21%

Type C
- 14%

Question 6

why’s it hard to tell countries apart?

Answer 6

• more difference / diversity within a culture than between cultures
• countries are all so relatively similar it is hard to tell them apart just by looking at a snapshot of findings

Question 7

evaluate the strengths of the meta analysis experiment

Answer 7

• method is quicker and cheaper than alternatives
• allows the researchers to obtain data from countries where language and cultural barriers may have been an issue
  -> i.e. China and Japan
• study is reliable as it can be easily replicated
• has a large sample from a variety of places, so is representative and therefore generalisable
• increases the validity of the conclusions drawn as they’re based on a wider range

Question 8

evaluate some limitations of the meta analysis

Answer 8

• many studies in the meta analysis had biased samples which cannot claim to be representative of each culture
  -> only 36 infants used in the Chinese study which is small sample
  size for such a populated country
  -> most of the studies analysed were from Western cultures
• tested and created in the USA
  -> may be culturally biased (ethnocentric)
  -> reflects the norms and values of American culture
  -> assumes attachment behaviour has the same meaning in all
  cultures
• found each study produced different levels of each attachment classification
  -> intro-cultural variation suggest that it’s an over simplification to
  assume all children are brought up in the same way in particular
  countries
• lots of countries and continents missing including Africa and lots of Asia
• research designs in studies can vary so they’re not truly comparable

Question 9

what did Takahashi find in 1990?

Answer 9

• Japanese infants were often seen as Type C
• rarely left by their PCG so the strange situation was terrifying for them
• in reunion stage they rushed back to their baby and stopped them up which made the child’s response hard to observe
• threatens the validity of the strange situation

Question 10

what did Grossman and Grossman find in 1990?

Answer 10

• imposed etic seen in the idea that a lack of
  -> separation anxiety
  -> pleasure on reunion
  indicate an insecure attachment
• in Germany this behaviour might be seen more as independence than evidence
• hence not a sign of insecurity in that cultural context