3.8 Cultural Variations

Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988)
1. Analysed 32 studies in 8 different countries using a meta analysis. Calculated an average percentage for different attachment styles.
  1. Findings: Secure attachment was the majority of infants with 70%. Lowest percentage of secure was in China and highest in Great Britain. Found that western countries that support independence had high levels of insecure avoidant. Individualist cultures had under 14% of children as Type C, but collectivist cultures had above 25%
Other studies
1. Italian studies
  1. Simonelli (2014) conducted a study in italy, finding 50% secure and 36% insecure avoidant. Suggests that patterns of attachment types are not static.
2. Korean study
  1. Conducted a study assessing 87 babies, those classifying as insecure were majorly resistant with only one avoidant.
3. Secure attachment most popular amongst all countries.
Evaluation
1. Strengths:
  1. Most studies were conducted by indigenous psychologists therefore enhancing the validity.
2. Weaknesses:
  1. Confounding variables. Not all experiments are matched in methodology and environmental variables may differ.
  2. Imposing etic. Behaviours assessed in Strange Situation may have different meanings in different cultural contexts.

Resource summary

	Created by Alicja Klak almost 2 years ago