CULTURAL VARIATIONS IN ATTACHMENT

SPECIFICATION: Cultural variations in attachment, including van Ijzendoorn.

Van IJzendoorn’s METANALYSIS of cultural attachment variations is named explicitly in the A-level psychology specification, so you need to know it. Good luck spelling his name.

VAN IJZENDOORN'S AND KROONENBERG’S (1988) METAANALYSIS OF CULTURAL VARIATIONS IN ATTACHMENT

PROCEDURES: Van Ijzendoorn conducted a meta-analysis examining the findings of 32 cross-cultural studies of attachment behaviour. Over 2000 strange situation classifications were examined from 8 different countries which examined the differences of attachment behaviour between cultures and differences and findings within the same culture.

RESULTS: They found little differences between cultures with the most common attachment type being “secure” followed by insecure-avoidant which was evident in most countries except Israel and Japan. They found the variation and differences within cultures were 1.5 times higher than variations between cultures.

CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrated how secure attachment was a global pattern not limited to Western cultures such as the US. This could be seen to support the view that attachment was an innate biological process that aids healthy social and emotional development and aid survival as it was evident across the globe.

EVALUATION OF THE METANALYSIS

Important to note however was that although over 2000 children were examined, some samples such as the Chinese sample were very small comprising only 36 children. It may, therefore, be unwise to generalise the results across all Chinese children as the findings may not represent the whole population.

Grossman et al (1991) found German children tended to be classified as insecurely attached which went against the majority of other cultures which were classed as secure. Child-rearing practices were believed to have influenced this, as German culture promotes interpersonal space between children and parents. Within Ainsworth’s strange situation children would therefore not display proximity seeking behaviour and be classed as insecurely attached. Therefore due to cultural differences in child-rearing practices, a secure attachment may be incorrectly interpreted which suggests Ainsworth’s model of classifying attachment may be flawed.

Tronick et al. (1992) studied the Efe, an African tribe who lived in Zaire and within extended family groups. Infants were looked after and breastfed by various women but would on most occasions sleep with their mother at night. At six months of age, despite such differences in child-rearing practices, they still preferred one primary attachment figure, suggesting it may be an innate biological process, as Bowlby suggested.

Takahashi (1990) used Ainsworth’s strange situation to study the attachment behaviour of 60 infants from middle-class Japanese families. His findings were similar to what Ainsworth had found in the US sample, with similar rates of secure attachment that supported Bowlby’s attachment theory. One major difference, however, was that the Japanese infants showed high rates of insecure-resistant attachment (32%) and no evidence of insecure-avoidant attachment. Another interesting finding was Japanese infants showed extreme anxiety at being alone and for 90% of the infants in the study, the experiment had to be stopped. Differences in child-rearing practices can explain this cultural variation in attachment behaviour. For example in Japan infants are rarely separated from their mothers which would explain their distress compared to the infants in the US study. This may make them appear insecurely attached, suggesting the strange situation may not be universally applied as a measure of attachment behaviour in other cultures.

The fact that there are cross-cultural similarities in attachment behaviour would suggest a strong case to support Bowlby’s attachment theory, as the process could be argued to be innate and thus apparent across most cultures and countries. However, a weakness of these findings is they could even be explained by nurture and psychological factors from the environment. For example, media influences are apparent across cultures in the form of television and books, which portray ideas on parenting. As a result, similar forms of media influence parents and children worldwide on what secure attachments should look like. Therefore, cultural similarities may not be due to biological processes but media influences. This would present a major weakness in Bowlby’s theory of attachment.

Another issue with Van Ijzendoorn’s study is an imposed etic based on Western cultural values that may not translate into the same meaning in other cultures or countries. For example, Ainsworth’s research assumed that children willing to explore their environment were “securely attached” based on Western values. However, dependence is encouraged in Japanese culture as a form of secure attachment, which would limit such behaviour and be translated incorrectly by Ainsworth’s strange situation scenario. This would mean such studies lack validity as they are not measuring true attachment behaviour across cultures but only Western ideals of secure attachment.

Further cultural bias is evident when you compare what is deemed to be securely attached behaviour between cultures. For example, Rothbaum (2000) argued the theory behind attachment behaviour was too heavily based on Western interpretations of what secure attachment looks like as a child and in adulthood. Bowlby and Ainsworth suggested the continuity hypothesis and that securely attached children would become securely attached adults through being emotionally and socially competent. They define competence as being able to show independence exploration and emotional regulation. In Japanese culture, secure attachment is seen as being group-focused and inhibiting emotions. This highlights that childrearing practices differ between cultures and must be examined to interpret the findings of the strange situation scenario.

Fox et al. examined infants raised on Israeli kibbutzim who were mostly cared for in communal children’s homes by nurses. The strange situation was used to test attachment styles to study how their relationships differed between the nurses and their actual mothers, with similar behaviour expressed by children towards both. The only difference was found in reunion behaviour towards their mothers, towards whom they showed a greater attachment. This highlights how a primary attachment figure may exist even in shared care environments suggesting attachment behaviour was more universal as Bowlby proposed supporting the idea of universal attachment.

Intra-cultural differences could be attributed due to differences in the socio-economic backgrounds of the family of infants involved. For example, some US samples were from middle-class families while others were from poorer families and intra-cultural differences in attachment being 1.5 times higher could be explained by this. Sub-cultures exist within cultures, and each may have its child-rearing practices.

Van Ijzendoorn and Sagi (2001) studied attachment behaviour from people from an urban background in Tokyo and found results similar to the attachment types of Western studies. However, they found more insecure-resistant individuals when studying attachment from a more rural sample. They concluded that caution should be taken and generalisations of a countri’s attachment type could not be assumed from samples based on a culture or subculture of people from one country. The implication is that concluding using Ainsworth’s strange situation is almost impossible as it will certainly lack validity and generalisation for that culture and sub-culture.

Possible exam questions on cultural variations in attachment include:

• Describe research by Van IJzendoorn on cultural variations in attachment (6 marks)

• Explain one criticism of research into cultural variations in attachment (4 marks)

• Outline and evaluate research on cultural variations in attachment (12 marks AS, 16 marks A-level)Cultural Variations In Attachment

• “Discuss/Outline/Research Into” AO1 and evaluate research on cultural variations in attachment A03 (16 marks).