Cultural variations in attachment

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Studies of cultural variations

Key Study: van Uzendoorn

  • Conducted a study to look at the proportions of secure, insecure-avoidant and insecure-resistant attachments across a range of countries
  • They also looked at the differences within the same countries to get an idea of variations within a culture
  • Procedures
    • The researchers located 32 studies of attachment where the strange situations had been used to investigate the proportions of infants with different attachment types
    • These 32 studies were conducted in 8 countries (Great Britain, Sweden, Japan, Netherlands, US, Israel, Germany and China)
    • The data for these 32 studies were meta-analysed
  • Findings
    • Secure attachment most common in all countries, but varied from 75% in Britain to 50% in China
    • Insecure resistant was least common 3% in Britain to 30% in Israel
    • Insecure avoidant most common in Germany and least common in Japan
    • Variation between results of studies within the same country were actually 150% greater than those between countries, e.g. in the US one study found only 46% securely attached compared to one sample as high as 90%

Other studies of cultural variations

An Italian study

  • Simonella conducted a study in Italy to see whether the proportions of babies of different attachment groups still matches those found in previous studies
  • The researchers assessed 76 12 month olds using the Strange situation
  • They found 50% were secure, with 36% insecure-avoidant
  • This is a lower rate of secure attachment than has been found in many studies
  • The researchers…

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