culture varations in attachment

Question 1

what is culture variations?

Answer 1

how behaviour may be due to cultural norms and social practices —> variations will affect development and behaviour of a a child

Question 2

what did Ainsworth find?

Answer 2

• Type B was most common in 60-75% of British children
  BUT if attachment styles were universal you would expect Type B to be the most common everywhere

Question 3

who were the researchers for culture variations?

Answer 3

Van Ijzendoorm and Krooenberg (1988)

Question 4

Van Ijzendoorm and Krooenberg procedure- what did they do?

Answer 4

• conducted a meta analysis (looked at pre existing studies and analyse the findings) —> all studies used same methodology and research question= could draw comparisons

Question 5

Van Ijzendoorm and Krooenberg procedure- how many studies did they review and from how manny different countries

Answer 5

reviewed 32 studies that used the Strange Situation to investigate proportion of babies with different attachment types
studies came from 8 different countries (but there’s 200+ countries in world!)

Question 6

Van Ijzendoorm and Krooenberg procedure- how many children were used in total and how many of the studies were US based

Answer 6

• 1990 children in total across all studies
• 15/32 studies were US based

Question 7

Van Ijzendoorm and Krooenberg findings

Answer 7

• wide variation between proportion of attachment types in different studies
• all countries type B= most common (universal norm)
  —> but proportion varied - 75% in Britain vs 50% in china

Question 8

Van Ijzendoorm and Krooenberg findings part 2

Answer 8

• individualistic cultures rates of insecure resistant were similar to Ainsworth original sample (under 14%)
• collectivist samples from China, Japan etc insecure resistant rates were above 25% and insecure avoidant rates were reduced

Question 9

what did Ijzendoorm and Sagi 2001 also find

Answer 9

• different within countries
• intra-cultural differences (within a country) were 150% greater than inter-cultural differences (different countries) where variations were smaller
• e.g. USA one sample found 46% securely attached and another found 90%
  —> reasons may be economic migration (brings culture and diversity, urban vs rural (Japan urban majority were type C vs Rural majority type B), technology= facetime etc meaning ppl can access and share ideas via media etc

Question 10

what was another study on cultural variations?

Answer 10

• Italian study- Simonelli et al (2014)
• asssessed 76 babies aged 12 months using Strange Siruation
  —> 50% =type B (lower than Ainsworth study)
  36=type A (higher than other studies)

—> suggests there’s an increase in the number of hours worked by mothers of infants annd time of infants spend in child care = attachment types aren’t static and vary to reflect culture and changes that occur over generations

Question 11

eval point 1

Answer 11

• most studies= conducted by indigenous psychologists (from some cultural back ground as ppts) e.g. Ijzendoorm and Krooenberg included research by Takahashi (who uses Japanese)
  —> this avoids potential problems in cross cultural research such as research misunderstanding ppts langauge, not much difficulty communicating and avoids bias (one nations stereotype of another)= increased validity
  BUT
  Tronick= outsider from America when studied child rearing patterns of attachment in Efe Zaine—> data may be affected in gathering data from ppts outside their own culture = data from some counties may be affected by bias and difficulty and cross communication

Question 12

eval point 2

Answer 12

confounding variable by carrying out meta analysis across different cultures —> different counties may have performed strange situation with varied methodology to characteristics like age, socio economic status (wealth and poverty), social class, rural vs urban = could have influenced findings also room size, (environmental variables) could be confounding toys etc
(found in Ijzendoorm and Sagi 2001 findings)

Question 13

eval point 3

Answer 13

• imposed etic- trying to impose a test designed for one cultural context to another context
  —> e.g. use of babies response to reunion with caregiver in strange situation —> in USA or Britain lack of affection may indicate Type A but in Germany the behaviour would be interpreted as independence (rather than insecurity)
  —> suggests behaviours measure may have same meanings in different cultural context and comparing then across cultures = meaningless

Question 14

eval point 4

Answer 14

competing explanations—> Bowlby explains similarity in attachment types in different countries by identifying attachment as innate and universal BUT Ijzendoorm and Krooenberg suggests media represents a particular view on how parents and babies should behave= override traditional cultural differences on how children are brought up

Question 15

eval point 5 and 6

Answer 15

Kagen et al (1986) - suggested Strange situation measures a child’s temperament instead of attachment = lowers validity

temporal validity lacks due to media etc influencing parenting over time = past findings less applicable to modern world

Question 16

eval point 7 and 8

Answer 16

• secondary data collected = can’t be fully certain on quality of it
• bias due to selection of studies

Question 17

eval point 9 and 10

Answer 17

comparisons made across a standardised procedure all using strange situation = high reliability

large sample used = increased reliability and good comparison BUT 15/32 studies = American and only assesses 8 countries when over200+ countries in world —> may overrepresent Western attachment norms