Cultural variations

Question 1

van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg study - overview

Answer 1

• Looked at the proportions of secure, insecure-avoidant and insecure-resistant att across a range of countries to assess cultural variation
• Also looked at differences within the same countries to get an idea of variations within a culture

Question 2

van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg study - procedure

Answer 2

• Located 32 studies of att where the SS had been used to investigate the proportions of babies with different att types
• Conducted in 8 countries - 15 were in the USA
• Gathered results for 1,990 children
• Data for these studies was meta-analysed

Question 3

van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg - findings

Answer 3

• Wide variation
• In all countries secure att was the most common
• In individualist cultures rates of insecure-resistant att was similar to Ainsworths original sample
• This wasn’t true for the collectivist samples from China, Japan and Israel where rates were above 25%

Question 4

Italian study

Answer 4

• Simonelli - conducted a study in Italy to see whether the proportions of babies of different att types still matches those found in previous studies
• assessed 76 babies aged 12 months using SS
• 50% Secure, 36% insecure-avoidant
• This is a lower rate of secure and higher rate of insecure-avoidant than other studies
• suggested this is because increasing numbers of mothers of very young children work long hours
• findings suggest patterns of att types are not static but can vary in line with cultural change

Question 5

Cultural variations - Evaluation - Strength

Answer 5

• Most of the research was conducted by indigenous researchers
• Indigenous researchers are those from the same cultural background as the participants
• Means many potential problems in cross-cultural research can be avoided such as misunderstanding language
• Enhances the validity of the study

Question 6

Cultural variations - Evaluation - Limitation

Answer 6

• Impact of confounding variables
• Studies conducted in different countries aren’t usually matched for methodology when compared in meta-analyses
• Simple characteristics e.g poverty + social class can confound results
• Environmental variables might also differ between studies and confound results - e.g size of room, toys or no toys
• Means looking at att behaviour in different non-matched studies conducted in different countries may not tell us anything about cross-cultural patterns of att