Cultural Variations In Attachment

Question 1

Van Ijzendoorn’ study aim

Answer 1

Investigate the proportion of secure, insecure- avoidant, and insecure resistant attachment across a range of countries, also looking at the difference within the same country to get an idea of the variations within a culture

Question 2

Procedure

Answer 2

They carried out a meta analysis of the findings from 32 studies carried out in 8 different countries using the strange situation to measure attachment. 32 studies yielded results for 1900 children

Question 3

Findings

Answer 3

Secure - 67% , insecure- avoidant -21%, insecure resistant 12%

Question 4

Evaluation

Answer 4

One weakness of the meta analysis by Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg is that is drew conclusions 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 different subcultures, each of which may have different child caring practices. One study of attachment in Tokyo found similar distributions of attachment types to other western studies, where as a more rural sample found an over representation of insecure- resistant individuals. Therefore, greater caution should be exercised in asinine that an individual sample is representative of a particular culture