Cultural Variations in Attachment
Van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenbeg's Research
Van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg (1988)
They conducted a meta-analysis in order to look at the proportions of secure, insecure, avoidant, and insecure resistant attachments across a range of countries.
Procedure
The meta-analysis consisted of 32 studies, across 8 countries, where the strange situation had been used to determine the proportions of babies with the three different attachment types identified by Mary Ainsworth; secure, insecure-avoidant, and insecure-resistant. It included 1990 children; 15 of the studies were in the US and one country was used to represent China.
Findings
They found that there was a wide variation in the proportion of attachment types in the 8 countries. However, they did find that there was more variation within the cultures than between the cultures. For example, in individualist cultures, it was found that insecure resistant attachment was very similar in proportion to the original sample used by Ainsworth, but this was different for the collectivist cultures, such as China, Japan, and Israel were the rates of insecure resistant attachments were all above 25%. They also found that the proportion of insecure avoidant attachment types were higher in individualist cultures, such as Germany, the United States, and Great Britain. However, secure attachment was the most common for all cultures of the 32 studied.
General conclusions
The research does suggest that secure attachment does seem to be the norm supporting John Bowlby’s conclusions that attachment is innate and also universal. However, the research does show that cultural differences in child rearing does have an influence on attachment types.
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Evaluation
1. ​One strength of the research in Van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg’s meta-analysis is that most of the studies were conducted by indigenous psychologists. These are psychologists who have the same cultural background as the participants. This kind of research means that misunderstandings are avoided, e.g. the researcher not being familiar with the culture. This means that this research has good validity.
The same cannot be said for all cross cultural attachment research. Morelli and Tronick (1991) looked at attachment patterns in Zaire and found difficulties gathering data. This is probably because they were researchers trying to obtain data from participants who they weren’t familiar with on a cultural level.
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2.One limitation of cross cultural research is the impact of confounding variables on research findings. One of the things with studying different countries is that they are not fully matched on methodology when using a meta-analysis. Even though they used the strange situation, which uses a standardised procedure, there are differences in characteristics of the sample such as poverty, social class and urban / rural which can have a confounding effect on the results. Furthermore, the studies might not be a standardised as the original strange situation study, in terms of the size of the room, the availability of the toys, etc. This means that the research by Van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg might lack validity as the 32 studies were not fully matched.
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3. A further limitation of cross-cultural research is that it is trying to impose a test designed from one culture to use with another culture. Ainsworth’s strange situation has been criticised as she is accused of imposing an etic. She assumes that this technique can be applied to all cultures.
One example of this is how the babies respond to reunion with the caregiver in the strange situation. In the US and the UK, the lack of affection at reunion shown by the baby might be considered to be indicative of an insecure attachment type, i.e. insecure avoidant, but in Germany, this behavior would be interpreted as being as a baby showing independence. Furthermore, it was found that babies in Japan became very distressed when they were separated from their mother, and the procedure had to be cut short. This is not because they are insecure-resistant, but because they are not used to being left by their caregivers.​​
Simonelli (2014)
Simonelli (2014)
Simonelli conducted a study in Italy and assessed 76 babies age 12 months of old age using the strange situation. They found that 50% of the babies were securely attached and 36% were insecure avoidant. They concluded that the high proportion of insecure avoidant attachment types was because babies were spending more time with a child-minder or in professional childcare from a young age because their mother’s were working. They concluded that attachment types might vary because of cultural changes in working patterns.​​
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Jin et al (2012)
Jin et al (201)
.A further study conducted in Korea by Jin et al (2012) also used the strange situation to assess 87 babies. It was found that the proportions of insecure and secure babies were similar to those in most countries with most babies being secure. However, most of the babies who were classed as insecure tended to be resistant, with only one baby being an insecure-avoidant type. This difference is very similar to the attachment types found in Japan in the Van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg Study and can be accounted for in terms of the similarity in child rearing styles in Japan and Korea as compared to America.​​
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