Transcript • Culture: A symbolic and behavioral inheritance . . .

• Culture: A symbolic and behavioral inheritance
received from out of the historical/ancestral past
...
– Symbolic inheritance: A cultural community’s
received ideas and understandings, both implicit and
explicit, about persons, society, nature, and the
metaphysical realm . . .
– Behavioral inheritance: Routine or institutionalized
family life, social, economic, and political practices
• Individuals are active agents in the
perpetuation of their symbolic and
behavioral inheritance
– Why?
• Ideas, values, and practices that are inherited
appear to members of a cultural community as
“right”, “true”, “moral”, “rational”, “normal”, etc.
• How does cultural psychology view the
role of culture in development?
– Culture is the “medium” of development
• Biological and “universal” features of the
environment interact within this medium
• Views individual psychology and culture as
interdependent and mutually active
• Challenge is to “soften” the contrast between
individual and context
• Cross-Cultural Psychology
– Culture is conceptualized as an independent
variable acting on the dependent variable of
individual psychology
– Methodologies developed in one cultural
context are “imported” into other cultures with
little or no modification
• Ex: Strange Situation (parent-infant attachment)
• In contrast, according to cultural
psychology
– Cultural ideas and practices are not separate
from observed behavior
• Therefore, cannot apply culture as an interpretive
framework after “behavior” has occurred (i.e., can’t
treat culture as an independent variable)
• Individual level cannot be separated from the
cultural level in understanding psychological
phenomena
– Methodologies are developed within a
particular culture
• What are the advantages or
disadvantages of . . .
– Developing methodologies within a particular
culture?
– Importing methodologies from one culture for
use in other cultures?
• Ex: Strange Situation as a measure of infant
attachment security
• Attachment Behaviors:
– Behaviors that function to bring the
infant/child physically closer to the caregiver
• Exs: crying, following, clinging
• Why is parent-child attachment important?
– First relationship that infants experience
• May serve as a model for other
relationships
• May affect the development of self-concept
Normative Development of Attachment:
Ethological Attachment Theory (J. Bowlby)
• Attachment behavior evolved because it is
adaptive for survival
– Keeps infants physically close to caregivers and
away from danger
– Increases the chances of infant survival and
reproductive success
Evidence (Ethological Attachment Theory):
• Animals that stray from a group are much
more vulnerable to attack
• Attachment behavior across a variety of
species (including humans):
– Occurs more frequently in those most vulnerable
to predators (e.g., the young)
– Increases in frightening situations
Strange Situation
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Mother and infant in laboratory playroom
Stranger enters, talks to mothers, engages infant
Mother leaves (stranger stays)
Mother returns (stranger leaves)
Mother leaves (baby alone)
Stranger returns
Mother returns
• Secure (B)
– About 60-65% of American middle-class
samples
– May or may not be distressed by
separation
– Respond positively to parent’s return
• If distressed by separation, easily
comforted by parent and able to return
to play (parent = secure base)
• Insecure-Avoidant (A)
– 15-20% of American middle-class
samples
– Usually not distressed by separation from
parent
– Avoid the parent during reunion (to
different degrees)
• Insecure-Resistant or Ambivalent (C)
– 10-15% of American middle-class samples
– Usually distressed by separation
– Show a combination of angry, resistant behavior
and proximity-seeking behavior during reunion
with parent
– Have difficulty being comforted by parent and
returning to play
• Antecedents of Attachment Security (in
American samples)
– Sensitive caregiving
• Considerable debate about the relation between
sensitivity and attachment security
– Infant temperament
• Also controversial
– Neither factor is strongly related to attachment
security
Cross-Cultural Patterns of Attachment
• Increased incidence of avoidant (A)
attachments in North Germany
• Increased incidence of ambivalentresistant attachments (C) in Japanese and
Israeli samples (esp. infants on kibbutzim)
Why?
• Inappropriate implementation or use of the
Strange Situation procedure to assess
attachment
– Prolonging separations to the point of extreme
infant distress (Japanese samples)
– Inappropriate measure for some cultures
– Japanese infants rarely experience separation
from caregivers; Israeli infants reared on
kibbutzim rarely encounter strangers
• In both cases, argument is that the procedure is
too stressful for these infants, resulting in
increased incidence of ambivalent-resistant
attachments