Culture and Child Attachment Patterns: a Behavioral Systems Synthesis

Abstract

We propose that the two dominant culture institutions (individualist and collectivist) are neither learned nor cognitively represented by the people who practice them. Instead, they exist as group-level payoff structures that reflect differential distributions of child attachment patterns within a society. Individualist societies reflect an overrepresentation of insecure-avoidant attachments and collectivist societies reflect an overrepresentation of insecure-anxious attachments. Moreover, attachment patterns are embodied rather than representational—schedule-induced rather than incrementally shaped or verbally learned. If attachment patterns are schedule-induced, the prospects are poorer for effecting cultural change through economic incentives or informational campaigns (top–down). Rather, cultural practices will be responsive to changes in family practices—to the extent they affect attachment patterns (bottom–up). For example, if breastfeeding rates decline or the workforce participation of women increases, a society will become more individualist and less collectivist. That is because those practices increase avoidant as compared to anxious attachments. Moreover, because insecurely attached children are behaviorally less flexible than are securely attached children, the former have a greater impact on cultural practices than do the latter.