Outline And Evaluate Research Into Cultural Variations In Attachment Analysis Essay Example

secure attachment is the best for healthy social and emotional development, but there are differences when it comes to the insecure attachment types. Overall the SSC is shown to be a good way of measuring infant’s attachment types across different cultures, despite the suggestions in the studies above.

However, there are limitations to the SSC, the key one being imposed etic, in which the same measuring system created in one culture is applied to another. In this case, a US measurement system was being applied across all other cultures. For example, it is assumed that willingness to explore is a sign of secure attachment. However in cultures like Japan, dependence rather than independence would be a sign of secure attachment, which was most likely the case with the Takahashi study, in which infants showed high rates of insecure resistant attachment (32%).

‘Amae’ is a term used in Japan, meaning to ‘depend and presume upon another’s love’ reinforcing this value of dependence. Because of the imposed etic, invalid results from the SSC may have been produced, particularly with countries like Japan. Another limitation is that attachment types tend to be generalised for the whole of the country. However, there are subcultures, such as rural and urban societies, which may have differences in attachment types themselves. Urban societies could be the same for Japan and US, the same with rural, making generalisation of a whole country from a few studies possibly seen as unfair.