Cultural Variations Flashcards
(3 cards)
Population Validity
A strength of combining the results of attachment studies carried out
in different countries is that you can end up with a very large sample. In Van Ijzendoorn meta-analysis there was a total of nearly 2000 babies and their primary attachment figure.However, care should be taken when drawing conclusions from Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg’s because of the limited variety of studies used. Over half (18) of the 32 studies were carried out in the US, whereas only one was carried out in China. 27 studies were carried out in individualistic cultures and only 5 in collectivist cultures. This suggests that the limited number of countries and small samples used may not be truly representative of the population and therefore more research must be conducted in a variety of cultures with larger samples to allow for meaningful comparisons.
Imposed etic
The Strange Situation (which was developed in the U.S.) may not be an appropriate way of measuring attachment types in other cultures as the Strange Situation reflects the norms and values of American culture. The use of a technique developed in one culture to study another is known as an imposed etic and it makes the methodology inherently flawed. For example, children raised on the Israeli Kibbutz are most distressed at the arrival of the stranger (Fox, 1977) and German children are more likely to be classed as insecure avoidant because their parents value independence (Grossmann and Grossmann,1991). These examples show that the strange situation has a different meaning in different cultures. This suggests that the Strange Situation may not be a valid measure of attachment in different cultures and if we are to interpret the findings of the Strange Situation accurately, we need to know about the child rearing practices of those cultures.
Country rather than Culture
The meta-analysis by Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg drew
conclusion about cultural differences, yet they actually were not comparing cultures but countries. For example, they compared Japan with the US. Within each country there are many difference subcultures, each of which may have different child caring practices. One study of attachment in Tokyo (an urban setting) found similar distributions of attachment
types to other Western studies, whereas a more rural sample found an over-representation of insecure-resistant individuals. Indeed, Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg found more variations within cultures than between cultures, presumably because the data was collected
on different subcultures within each country. Therefore, greater caution should be exercised in assuming that an individual sample is representative of a particular culture.
