Marinus Van IJzendoorn & Pieter Kroonenberg 1988

AIMS: Van IJzendoorn & Kroonenberg aimed to investigate cross-cultural variation in attachment types through a meta-analysis of research, which had studied attachments in other cultures. They compared only the findings of  studies that had used the Strange Situation in order to draw inferences about the external validity of this as a measure of attachment to other populations (population validity) and other settings (ecological validity).

PROCEDURE (METHOD): Van IJzendoorn & Kroonenberg researched various databases to carry out a meta-analysis which compared the findings of 32 studies that had used the Strange Situation to measure attachment and to classify the attachment relationship between the mother and the infant. Studies were excluded if they looked at special groups such as Down’s Syndrome or twins, or they involved fewer than 35 infants. In all 2,000 Strange Situation classifications were examined.

Research from 8 different nations was compared, which included Western cultures (eg: US, Great Britain, Germany) and non-western cultures (eg: Japan, China, Israel).  

Van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg suggested this might be explained by the effects of mass media (eg: TV and books) which spread ideas about parenting so that children all over the world are exposed to similar influences.

However, the significant variations demonstrate that universality is limited. Implications include the linking of the variation in attachment to child-rearing practices. Also, the greater variation found within cultures suggests that sub-cultural comparison studies may be more valid than cross-cultural comparisons. The significant differences also question the validity of the Strange Situation.

EVALUATION (CRITICISMS):

• One explanation of the large within-culture variation is that some studies involved middle-class infants whereas others involved working-class infants. Some American studies looked at urban populations whereas others were more rural. Rural societies in the US may be more similar to rural societies in Israel than they are to urban societies in the US. It is oversimplistic to view Britain or America as one single culture, as within each country there are many sub-cultures that may differ in the nature of attachment types. The greater variation found within cultures undermines the cross-cultural research as it shows that it is wrong to think of one culture as a whole, and so cross-cultural comparisons based on this assumption lacks validity.  
  This means that the findings may not be representative of the culture they are assumed to represent and will generalise back only to the sub-cultures that were sampled within the various cultures.
• The Strange Situation was created and tested in the USA which means that it may be culturally-biased (ethnocentric) as it will reflect the norms and values of American culture. The Strange Situation test, which is based on the concept that attachment is related to anxiety on separation, assumes that behaviour has the same meaning in all cultures, when, in fact, social constructions of behaviour differ greatly. For example, in Japan, infants are very rarely parted from their mother. As a result, the Strange Situation represents more of a threat to them than it usually does to Western infants - yet this is interpreted via Mary Ainsworth’s measures as insecure attachment. (Imposing one set of cultural values on another unrelated culture with the idea that those values are universal is an imposed etic.) Thus, the usefulness of the Strange Situation in assessing attachment across cultures may be limited by the subjectivity inherent in observation and interpretation of behaviour.
• In spite of its limitations, the Strange Situation is the only test of infant attachment that has been used in several different countries. It may be that it can be used to better understand some of the main sub-cultural differences found within any given country.

RESULTS (FINDINGS): Considerable consistency in the overall distribution of attachment types was found across all cultures. Secure attachment (Type B) was the most common type of attachment in all 8 nations. However, significant differences were found between the distributions of insecure attachments. For example, in Western cultures the dominant insecure type is anxious-avoidant (Type A), whereas in non-Western cultures it is anxious-resistant (Type C), with China being the only exception, as anxious/avoidant and anxious/resistant were distributed equally.

One of the most significant findings was that there is 1.5 times greater variation within cultures than between cultures. Eg: the 2 Japanese studies. One found no anxious-avoidant but a high proportion of anxious-resistant. The other found a pattern much more like the ‘standard’ Ainsworth one.

CONCLUSIONS: The overall consistency in attachment types leads to the conclusion that there may be universal characteristics that underpin infant and caregiver interactions.