CULTURAL VARIATIONS IN

ATTACHMENT

AO1:
STUDY 1 – Van ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988): STUDY 2 – Takahashi (1990):

Procedure
 Aimed to measure the proportions of Type A/B/C attachments across a
range of cultures and if variations exist within cultures
 Conducted a meta analysis of findings from 32 studies where strange
situation has been used
 The 32 studies were conducted in 8 countries with results from 1990
children
Findings
 Secure attachment was the most common in every country (universal),
varying from 75% in Britain and 50% in China
 Insecure avoidant was observed the highest in Germany and the lowest
in Japan
 Insecure resistant was the highest in Japan and the lowest in Britain
 1.5X greater variation within a country
Procedure
 Conducted a strange situation observation using 60 middle class Japanese
infants and their mothers
Findings
 Found similar rates of secure attachment as suggested by Ainsworth
 However, Japanese infants did not show any evidence of insecure
avoidance attachment and high rates of insecure resistant attachment
(32%)
 The Japanese infants were so distressed by being left alone, that for 90%
of the infants, the study was stopped at this point

Conclusion
 Across all countries secure attachment was the most common
 Attachment types vary within cultures whilst varying between cultures
too

AO2/AO3:
 Large samples ー Methodology is biased ー Imbalance in choice of studies
E A strength of combining the results of P A weakness of using the strange situation to P A weakness of Van Ijzendoorn’s research is
attachment studies carried out in different deem cultural variations in attachment is the that there is an imbalance of studies used
countries is that you can have a very large method of assessment is culturally biased E For example, while the sample for Van
sample E For example, since the strange situation has Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg’s study is large
E For example, Van Ijzendoorn and been designed by an American researcher and enough to rule out the effect of anomalous
Kroonenberg’s meta-analysis had a total of is based on a British theory, there is a wide results, it is still quite biased towards having a
1990 infants and their primary attachment debate on whether such western theories and heavily American population. Out of the 32
figures assessments can be applied to other cultures studies in the meta-analysis, 18 were
E This is a strength as this large sample reduces E This is an issues as assuming a theory designed conducted on American participants and only
the impact of anomalous results on the overall for one culture can be applied to another one conducted on Chinese participants
conclusions drawn culture is ethnocentric. This leads to biased E This is problematic as it questions the accuracy
L Therefore this increases the internal validity of results in other cultures. For example, the lack of drawing conclusions about Chinese culture
the study of separation anxiety in German children (as based on only 25 parent-infant pairs, when
reported by Grossman and Grossman) might there were hundreds of such pairs to draw
be perceived more as desirable independence balanced conclusions for a country which has a
rather than a sign of insecurity significantly smaller population
L The strange situation is therefore culturally L Therefore, the meta-analysis is not fairly
biased and not a suitable method assessing representative of all cultures, reducing the
attachment in all cultures validity of its findings
Applicable evaluations from Ainsworth
ー There are other types of existing attachments too ー Different attachments with different caregivers
P A weakness of strange situation is that later research demonstrated that P A weakness of the strange situation is that infants may have different
Ainsworth has not accounted for a key fourth type of attachment attachments with different caregivers
E Main and Solomon analysed over 200 Strange Situation tapes and E For example, the strange situation aimed to measure the attachment type
proposed a type D attachment: insecure-disorganised. This was of a child, however researchers claim that it is too focused on the one
characterised by a lack of consistent social behaviour and attachment. relationship between the carer and the infant being assessed. Main and
These infants lacked a coherent strategy of dealing with stress of Weston found that children behaved differently based on which parent
separation – they showed very strong attachment, which was suddenly they were with
followed by avoidance or looking scared of the caregiver E Therefore, by just measuring a child’s general attachment tendencies,
E Since Ainsworth’s research did not account for this attachment her Ainsworth might have been just assessing the quality of the relationship
research on attachments could be seen as lacking sufficient detail between that one carer and the child
L This reduces the validity of the findings L Thus, reducing internal validity of the experiment

NOTE: Only select the relevant AO1s (e.g. 2/3 points) and four evaluation points (AO2/AO3)