Cultural Variations in Attachment: Van Ijzendoorn (AQA A Level Psychology): Revision Note

Cultural variations in attachment

• Cultural variations refer to how behaviour may be a product of cultural norms and social practices

• These variations will affect the development of a child and their behaviour

• Van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg (1988) were interested in how cultural variations affected attachment behaviour

• Procedure:

  • A meta-analysis of 32 studieswas conducted

  • Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg were interested in investigating inter-cultural differences and intra-cultural differences in attachment

  • The study looked at nearly 2000 children who had been assessed via the Strange Situation from eight different countries: UK, USA, Sweden, Japan, China, Holland, Germany and Israel

• Findings:

  • There were wide inter-cultural differences in the attachment types in different cultures

    • E.g., secure attachment varied from 75% in the UK to 50% in China

  • All countries showed securely attached as the most common classification

  • In individualist cultures (such as the UK and the US), insecure-resistant attachment was under 14% of infants assessed (similar to Ainsworth's original sample)

    • Individualistic countries that support independence such as Germany had high levels of resistant-avoidant attachment

  • In collectivist cultures (such as China and Japan), insecure-resistant attachment was above 25% of infants assessed

  • Variation in results of intra-cultural studies was 150% greater than in inter-cultural studies, where variation was small

    • E.g., secure attachment varied from 90% to 46% in the USA

• Conclusions:

  • Van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg concluded that

    • patterns of attachment across cultures (inter-cultural differences) appear to be similar to those of the original data (USA and UK)

    • secure attachment is the most common attachment type (the 'norm')

  • These findings support the ideas that

    • secure attachment is required for healthy social and emotional development

    • attachment is an innate process

Other studies on cultural variations

• There are other studies into cultural variations, such as an Italian study carried out by Simonelli et al. (2014)

• The researchers used the Strange Situation to assess 76 infants aged 12 months

  • 50% were securely attached, which is lower than in other studies, such as Ainsworth's British and American studies

  • 36% were insecure-avoidant; this is higher compared with other studies

  • Simonelli et al. concluded that there is an increase in the number of hours worked by mothers of infants and the time infants spend away from their mothers in childcare

    • This suggests that attachment types can vary to reflect a culture and changes that occur over generations

Evaluation

Strengths

• All studies assessed used the Strange Situation as a way of classifying attachment

  • Comparisons made are therefore using a standardised procedure

  • This means there is high reliability to the findings of Van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg

• A robust cross-cultural comparison was made by Van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg

  • 32 studies were assessed, across 8 different countries, looking at nearly 2000 infants

  • A large sample increases the reliability of the findings

Limitations

• Van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg compared countries and not cultures

  • Within each country are many different cultural variations

  • Van Ijzendoorn & Sagi (2001) found that attachment within Japan varied, with Tokyo having similar attachment styles to those of Western countries, whilst more rural settings had larger numbers of insecure-resistant attached infants

  • This suggests that the findings of Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988) might not be due to cultural variations

  • More care is needed to assess whether a sample is representative of a culture rather than a country

• There are likely to be many confounding variables by carrying out a meta-analysis across different cultures

  • Different countries may have performed the Strange Situation with a varied methodology

  • Confounding variables that may have impacted the findings are characteristics such as

    • age

    • social economic status (poverty or wealth)

    • social class

    • urban or rural living

  • This means that the findings may lack validity and conclusions cannot be drawn due to the non-matched studies assessed