Cultural variations in attachment, including van Ijzendoorn.Cultural variations in attachment, including van Ijzendoorn. Flashcards
(20 cards)
What is culture?
The rules, the customs, morals and ways of interacting that bind together members of a society or some other collection of people.
What is cultural bias?
Refers to a tendency to ignore cultural differences and interpret all phenomena through the lens of one’s own culture.
What is cultural relativism?
The idea that norms and values, as well as ethics and moral standards, can only be the meaningful and understood within specific social and cultural contexts.
What is an etic approach?
An etic approach looks at behaviour from outside of a given culture and attempts to describe this behaviours as universal
What is an emic approach?
An emic approach functions from within or inside certain cultures and identifies behaviours that are specific to that culture.
What is imposed etic?
When theories, models, concepts etc. are suggested to be universal, when they actually came about through research within a single culture. Psychologists should be much more mindful of the cultural relativism of their research.
What was Van Ijzendoorn and Koonenbergs aim? (1988)
They wanted to see if the differences (inter) between cultures existed as well as whether there were differences within (intra) a culture.
What was Van Ijzendoorn and Koonenbergs method?
Conducted a meta-analysis of the findings of 32 studies of attachment behaviour. All the studies used the strange situation procedure.
What did Van Ijzendoorn and Koonenbergs find of the variation between attachment types?
There was wide variation between the proportions of attachment types in different studies. In all countries secure attachment was the most common classification.
What did Van Ijzendoorn and Koonenbergs find in individualist cultures?
In individualist cultures rates of insecure-resistant attachment were similar to Ainsworths original sample (all under 14%).
What did Van Ijzendoorn and Koonenbergs find in collectivist cultures?
For the collectivist samples from China, Japan and Israel rates were above 25% (and where rates of insecure-avoidant attachment were reduced).
What did Tronick et al. (1992) find about cultural similarities in attachment among the Efe tribe?
Despite being breastfed and cared for by multiple women, Efe tribe infants (Africa) still formed one primary attachment by six months. This supports Bowlby’s view that forming a primary attachment is a biological and universal process.
What does Tronick et al. (1992)’s study suggest about attachment?
It suggests that primary attachment formation is biologically programmed and consistent across cultures, despite variations in caregiving practices.
What did Grossmann & Grossmann (1991) find about attachment in German infants?
German infants were more likely to be classified as insecurely avoidant. This may be due to cultural child raising practices that value independence and discourage proximity-seeking.
How does German culture potentially influence Strange Situation results?
German culture, parents encourage independence and emotional distance, which may cause infants to appear avoidant in the Strange Situation but may not reflect insecure attachment in that cultural context.
Why were Japanese infants highly distressed during the Strange Situation (Takahashi et al., 1990)?
Japanese infants rarely experience separation from their mothers due to cultural childcare norms, which made them more distressed and appear insecurely attached during separations.
What did Takahashi et al. (1990) discover about Japanese infants in the Strange Situation?
They found similar levels of secure attachment as Ainsworth’s original study but reported no insecure avoidant attachments and high rates (32%) of insecure resistant. 90% of sessions had to be stopped due to distress.
What is a major issue with using the Strange Situation across cultures?
is ethnocentric—developed in the USA based on Western norms—so it may not accurately assess attachment in cultures with different caregiving practices (e.g. Japan, Germany).
How do cultural practices affect attachment classifications in the Strange Situation?
Variations in childrearing practices (e.g. emphasis on independence in Germany or constant closeness in Japan) can influence how infants behave in the Strange Situation, possibly leading to misclassification of attachment type.
