Cultural variations in attachment Developmental Psychology Learning objectives

Cultural variations in attachment Developmental Psychology

Learning objectives To describe cross-cultural variations in attachment To evaluate research into cross-cultural variations of attachment

What strengths/criticisms can you remember from last week?

Challenging thought! Child-rearing practices should be the same as those in the UK all over the world, therefore the same patterns in attachment types will be found across cultures. Agree?

Culture and attachment Culture is the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterises an institution, organization or group Individualistic culture- sees individuals and independence important Collectivist culture- sees the group/community as important, things are shared, aspire to be interdependent. If we judge another culture using the values and practices of our own culture this is ethnocentrism. How may child-rearing practices vary across cultures?

How does child-rearing vary across different countries? Japan Israel What attachment types might be displayed in these countries?

Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988) Complete the table using pages 127 of the textbook Answer the question below the table – what do the results show? EXTENSION – What methodological issues are there with the meta-analysis?

What do the results show?

Differences within a Culture There was a one and a half times greater variation within a culture than between a culture. For example: One of the Japanese samples was more similar to two of the US samples than to the other Japanese sample.

Takahashi – Page 126 Japanese children Experience less separation – sleep with parents until over 2 years of age, and never left alone 0% avoidant behaviour – this is rude in Japanese culture Strange situation is ethnocentric – does no have the same meaning for Japanese culture

Evaluation How could we evaluate the two studies? Think about: - Samples used – in meta-analysis, 18 studies used from US, only 1 in china and Sweden – not enough samples, biased - Ethical issues – so distressing for infants in japan that the “left alone” stage of the strange situation had to be removed – came to psychological harm - Ethnocentrism – Strange situation doesn’t address the nature of each countries attitude towards child rearing – i. e. in Japan – not independent, never left alone