Cross-Cultural Patterns of Attachment: A Meta-Analysis of the Strange Situation
Van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg pooled nearly two thousand Strange Situation classifications from eight countries to ask whether attachment patterns differ by culture. Their headline result is the one this vault cites most often, and it cuts against the usual framing of the question. Variation within countries was roughly one and a half times larger than variation between them, and samples from one country sometimes resembled samples from another country more than they resembled each other. So talking about a national attachment profile is misleading when the spread inside any nation is wider than the gap between nations. They did find a cross-cultural pattern on top of that: the avoidant classification appeared relatively more often in Western European samples, and the resistant classification relatively more often in Israel and Japan. Earlier cross-cultural work had leaned on single small samples, and the aggregation is what makes this paper the reference point.
Van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg pooled nearly two thousand Strange Situation classifications from eight countries to ask whether attachment patterns differ by culture. Their headline result is the one this vault cites most often, and it cuts against the usual framing of the question. Variation within countries was roughly one and a half times larger than variation between them, and samples from one country sometimes resembled samples from another country more than they resembled each other. So talking about a national attachment profile is misleading when the spread inside any nation is wider than the gap between nations. They did find a cross-cultural pattern on top of that: the avoidant classification appeared relatively more often in Western European samples, and the resistant classification relatively more often in Israel and Japan. Earlier cross-cultural work had leaned on single small samples, and the aggregation is what makes this paper the reference point.
Written from the abstract, OpenAlex.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
van IJzendoorn, M. H., & Kroonenberg, P. M. (1988). 'Cross-cultural patterns of attachment: a meta-analysis of the strange situation.' Child Development, 59(1), 147-156. 32 samples, 8 countries, 1,990 infants. Within-country variation was about 1.5 times the between-country variation.
Where we use it
- What the Crib Actually Decides, Why We Care
Reliability of this reference
The link below was matched against the publisher's record on title, first author and year, and all three agree.
The source
https://doi.org/10.2307/1130396
DOI: 10.2307/1130396