Attachment: Cultural Variation
Cultural Variation
Cultural Variations is the differences in behaviours that different cultures behold.
For example, Ainsworth executed most her experiments and studies in the USA. Child studies varied in relation to traditions, beliefs and environment. What may be normal in one culture, may be completely abnormal in another.
Main types of cultures:
Individualist Cultures
Treasure independence with each working towards their own gain – USA and Europe (Western)
Collective Cultures
Treasure collaboration and tend to work as a collective towards family and group goals – Japan and Israel (Non-Western)
Ky studies:
Van Ljzendoorn and Kroonenberg:
Investigated attachment types within cultures and wanted to see how the attachments styles applied.
They attempted to investigate if attachments styles such as secure and insecure are common in different styles? Or are they kept within cultures?
In order to find this out they conducted a ‘Meta-Analysis’. The data was collected from 32 different studies from 8 countries. All these studies used the ‘strange situation’ to study attachment.
Using this data, they gathered the average percentage for the different styles of attachments (avoidant, resistant and secure) across all the countries.
They found:
Secure attachments were the most common type of across all countries.
In secure attachment, it was found that china had the smallest percentage and that the largest percentage was in Britain.
Results showed that individualistic countries that support independence such as Germany had high levels of anxious avoidant, whereas countries that are more culturally collectivist, had high levels of ambivalent resistant.
As the findings are consistent, it is believed that attachments types are shared throughout cultures.
