ATTACHMENT - cultural variations in attachment Flashcards
What are cultural variations?
Culture refers to the norms and values that exist within any group of people. Cultural variations are the difference in norms and values that exist between people in different groups.
What did Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988) research about?
They conducted a study to look at the proportions of secure, insecure avoidant, insecure resistant attachment across a range of countries to assess cultural variation.
What was the procedure of Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988)?
- 32 studies of attachment where strange situation was used to investigate the proportions of babies with different attachment types was located by researchers.
-conducted in 8 countries
-overall study you did 1990 children.
-Data was meta analysed = results were combined and analysed together.
What were the findings of Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988)?
- wide variation between proportions of attachment types and different studies
-Secure attachment was most common classification in all countries
-proportion varied from 75% in Britain to 50% in China
-in individualist cultures rates of insecure resistant attachment was similar to Ainsworth’s original sample.
-however in collectivist countries, rates of insecure avoidant attachment were reduced.
Explain the Italian study?
Simonelli et al (2014)
- aim was to see whether the proportions of babies of different attachment types still matches those found in previous studies
- 76 babies aged 12 months assessed using strange situation
- 50% were secure, 36% were insecure avoidant
-lower rate of secure attachment and higher rate of insecure avoidant attachment has been found in many studies = there is increasing numbers of mothers of very young children that work long hours and use professional childcare.
- these finding suggests that patterns of attachment types vary in line with cultural change.
Explain the Korean study?
Jin et al (2012)
- aim was to compare the proportions of attachment types in Korea to other studies.
-strange situation used to assess 87 babies
-overall proportions of insecure and secure babies were similar to those in most countries
-similar to the distribution found in Japan (Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg)
-since Japan and Korea have quite similar child-rearing styles the similarity might be explained in terms of child-rearing style,
What are the conclusions drawn from studies of cultural variations?
-Secure attachment seems to be the norm in a wide range of cultures.
-research clearly shows that cultural practices have an influence on attachment type.
Give STRENGTHS on the studies of the cultural variations?
- most studies were conducted by indigenous psychologists
Indigenous psychologists are those from the same cultural background.
eg Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg included research by a German team ( Grossman et al). This means that potential problems in cross-cultural research can be avoided such as misunderstandings of the language used by participants.
This means there is an excellent chance that researchers and participants communicated successfully increasing the validity of the data collected.
Give LIMITATIONS on the studies of the cultural variations?
- Morelli and Tronick were outsiders from America and they studied child rearing and patterns of attachment. The data might have been affected by difficulties in gathering data from participants outside their own culture.
This means data from some countries may have been affected by bias and difficulty in cross-cultural communication. - meta analysis of patterns of attachment types is the impact of confounding variables and findings.
Studies conducted in different countries are not usually matched for methodology when they are comparing reviews or meta-analysis. For example sample characteristics such as poverty, social class can confound results as can the age of participants studied in different countries.
This means that looking at attachment behaviour in different nonmatched studies in different countries may not tell us anything about cross-cultural patterns of attachment.
-Imposing a test designed for one cultural context to another context
Imposed etic occurs when we assume an idea or technique that works in one cultural context will work in another. For example using a baby’s response to reunion with a caregiver in strange situation = in Britain and US lack of affection on reunion may indicate an avoidant attachment, however in Germany such behaviour would be interpreted as Independence rather than insecurity.
This means that behaviour is measured by the strange situation may not have the same meanings in different cultural context, comparing them across cultures is meaningless.
