A cross-cultural survey of the effects of anxiety on the relationship between child rearing and cognition.

A cross-cultural study involving a basic pool of 44 societies throughout the world was conducted to analyze the effect of anxiety on the relationship between certain child-rearing variables and cultural measures of cognitive complexity and self-esteem. The research demonstrated that societies utilizing anxiety-arousing techniques did so consistently across a variety of apparently contradictory child-rearing variables. The introduction of anxiety to the rearing experience had the general effect of changing previously established patterns of interaction, sometimes with major sex differences. Thus, socialization toward group norms and away from independent activity was positively associated with indicators of cognitive development (Zern, 1983). When anxiety over the socialization experience existed, however, no systematic relationship was demonstrated for either sex. Self-esteem was also positively related to pressures to socialize when no anxiety existed. For women, when anxiety was introduced, there was a strong negative relationship. For men, anxiety caused no systematic connections of any kind between pressures to socialize and self-esteem.