Cultural Variations In Attachment- Topic 6 Flashcards
(11 cards)
What is cultural variation about ?
Attachment formed may vary between societies and between cultures, depending upon the child rearing techniques seen as most desirable within that community. Cultural variation looks at different patterns of attachment found in other cultures and possible explanations for these differences.
Wheat are the two types of cultures?
-Collectivist Cultures, like Japan and china
-Individualistic cultures like USA and UK
What was VAN LJZENDOORN et al’s study?
They carried out a meta analysis combining the findings of 32 other studies of the strange situation from a variety of countries based in the observation of over 200 children.
What was the aims of the study?
-to investigate the proportion of attachments across a range of countries using the strange situation procedure.
-and to look at the differences within the same countries to investigate variation within a culture.
What was the procedure?
Researchers conducted a meta analysis to compare findings from 32 studies that had used the strange situation to examine attachment types. They looked at 8 nations including individualistic like UK, USA and Germany and collectivist like china and Japan cultures.
What were the findings ?
- higher levels of insecure avoidant infants were in individualistic countries like USA
-and higher levels of insecure resistant infants in collectivist countries like Japan
What was one of the most important findings ?
Variations WITHIN the same country were actually 150% greater than those between countries, for example in the USA one study found only 46% were securely attached compared to another sample as high as 90%.
What were two studies and their explanations of the cross cultural differences ?
-the GERMAN study highlights a high percentage of avoidant behaviour, typical of independent children. German parents seem ‘independent, non clingy infants who don’t make demands on parents but obey their commands.
-the JAPANESE study highlighted that children show similar patterns of attachment to the Israeli children but for different reasons, Japanese children are very rarely left by their mothers, so they feel distressed when she leaves because of shock rather than to insecure attachment. And the distress from the present of a stranger is due to the absence of the mother.
What was the Italian study?
Simonella, aimed to investigate the proportion of attachment types in Italy. So assessed 76 babies ages 12 months, using the strange situation. 50% were secure and 36% insecure avoidant. This is a lower rate of secure attachments compared to other. This is because of the increasing numbers of mothers of very young children working longer hours and so staying in professional childcare.
What are the overall conclusions from across cultural studies?
-secure attachment seems to be the norm in a wide range of cultures supporting bowlbys idea that attachment is innate and universal
-however, differences are apparent between collectivist and individualistic cultures as a result of different child rearing practices.
What are some evaluations of IJZENDOORN et al’s study?
-the use of a meta analysis is ethically sound as there’s no new data collection involved in the study and so no more children had to be put through the potentially traumatic experience.
-study may not be truely representative. In some countries only a small amount of studies was considered, for example 1 in china and 18 in the USA.
