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Cross Cultural Variations. - Coggle Diagram
Cross Cultural Variations.
Bowlby claims that attachment had evolved to provide protection for an infant. Evolving was needed for survival.
If attachment is an innate process then, secure attachment should be the optimal form for humans regardless of cultural variations.
However, other attachments are found in other cultures to be dominant. Therefore, attachment is not innately determined but also down to child rearing practices.
Van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg’s (1988)
They did a meta-analysis that summarized findings from 8 countries, which included the UK, US, Sweden, Japan, China, Holland, Germany & Israel.
The meta- analysis examined 32 studies and consulted nearly 2000 Strange Situation classifications in total.
Conclusions:
Average findings were consistent with Ainsworth’s original research - Secure 65% - Avoidant 21% - Resistant 14%
Intra-cultural variation was nearly 15 times greater than the cross-cultural variations. Van Ijzendoorn speculated that this was linked to differences in socio-economic factors and levels of stress that varied between samples used within each country.
6/8 countries produced findings that were proportionally consistent with Ainsworth & Bell (70).
Japan & Israel revealed a higher incidence of resistant than avoidant children.
Chinese findings revealed the lowest rate of secure attachments (50%) with the remaining children falling into the other categories equally.
It was concluded that the modest cross-cultural differences reflect the effects of mass media, which portrays similar notions of parenting.
Secure attachment seems to the norm in a wide range of cultures. This supports Bowlby's theory that attachment is innate and universal. However, there is still a lot of evidence to show that cultural practices have an impact.
Cultural Similarities. - supporting Bowlby.
Tronick et al.
He studies a tribe in Africa, the Efe. The infants were looked after and even breastfeed by other women in the community. At night the infants usually slept with their own mothers.
Despite such differences in childrearing practices the infant still had one primary attachment.
Cultural differences - not supporting Bowlby.
Grossman and Grossman.
They found higher levels of insecure attachment among German infants. This may be due to childrearing practices in Germany.
German cultures involve keeping interpersonal distance between parent and infant. Therefore, infants do not engage in proximity seeking behavior. This makes them seem to have an insecure attachment.
Takahashi.
Takahashi replicated the Strange Situation with 60 middle-class Japanese infants and mothers using the same standardized procedure and behavioural categories.
Takahashi’s observation revealed distinct cultural differences in how the infants responded to the 8 stages of the procedure.
The findings were as follows:
Japanese infants show no evidence of insecure-avoidant attachment and 32% insecure-resistant.
. Infants became severely distressed in the “infant alone step”; this situation was quite unnatural and broke cultural norms for the infants
This lead to 90% of infant-alone steps had to be stopped due to excessive infant anxiety.
A weakness of the research is that it could be seen as unethical.
Takahashi’s research was unethical as the harm that the procedure caused exceeded what infants would be exposed to in their day-to-day lives meaning that it exceeded undue risk. As Japanese infants are rarely separated from their primary caregivers, the infant-alone step induced stress that they would not normally encounter and so the level of harm can be considered unjustifiable. Despite this being the case, the researchers did stop infant-alone steps prematurely in an attempt to protect infants from further harm.
Other Studies of cultural variations.
Italian Study:
Alessandra Simonelli et al conducted a study to see where the proportions of infants of different attachment types still match those found in previous studies.
They found that 50% of babies were secure and 36% insecure-avoidant attachment.
There was a lower rate of secure attachments and an increased rate of insecure-avoidant.
This is because there is an increasing number of mothers of young children who work long hours and use professional childcare.
These show that patterns of attachment are not static but vary in line with cultural change.
Korean Study:
Mi Kyoung jin et al did a study to compare attachment types in Korea to the rest of the world.
Most babies were secure which, is similar to the rest of the world.
The rest were all insecure resistant except one infant that was avoidant.
Korea's results are similar to Japan's results.
Evaluation.
Applying Strange Situation procedures and behavioural categories is ethnocentric.
Cross-cultural research using the Strange Situation judges and categorises infant behaviour according to behavioural categories that were developed following observations of middle-class American infants.
This means that when researchers interpret non-American infant behaviour, it is being judged against an American standard.
Eg. an infant exploring the playroom by themselves would be classed as avoidant based on American standards but is valued as reflecting independence in Germany.
Indigenous researcher.
Most of the studies were carried out by indigenous researchers meaning, they were from the same cultural background as the participants.
This means you avoid any potential problems in cross-cultural research ie: misunderstandings of the language used by participants.
This enhances the validity of the data collected.
However...
This is not the case for all cross-cultural studies such as, Tronick when he studied attachment types in Africa. This could cause data to be bias because of one nation's stereotypes of another.
Competing explanations!
Bowlby explains the similarities found in attachment types in different countries by saying that attachment is innate and universal.
Uzendoorn and Kroonenberg suggested that global media represents a particular view of how parents and infants should behave.
This may override traditional cultural differences in the way children are brought up.
Overall findings are misleading?
As a disproportionately high number of the studies reviewed were conducted in the USA (18/32), the overall findings would have been distorted by these.
This means that the apparent consistency between cultures might not genuinely reflect how much attachment types vary between cultures.
The study was not globally representative.
Van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg recognised that data from less Western-oriented cultures were required to establish a more global perspective attachment classifications, pointing out that Africa, South America, and Eastern European socialist countries were not represented.
Nation NOT Culture??!!
The meta-analysis was not comparing cultures but instead countries.
They failed to show understanding that there are many different subcultures within one country.
For example, in one study they found that in Toyok there were similar results to Western countries but in rural Japan, there were an over representation of insecure-resistant individuals.
However....
Uzendoorn and Kroonenberg concluded....
'Great caution should be exercised n assuming that an individual sample is representative of a particular (culture or even subculture)'
