Young adult attachment styles and perceptions of elder abuse: a cross-cultural study

In this cross-cultural study of young adults' judgments of the abusiveness and typicality of caregivers abusive behaviors toward an elderly person, data were collected from 100 Caucasian-American and 115 Korean college students. All participants completed Bartholomew's four-category measure of attachment styles as well as Mills' Elderly Caregiving Questionnaire. The Korean college students judged material and physical maltreatment of an elderly person as significantly less abusive and psychological maltreatment as significantly more abusive than the Caucasian American students did. There were no gender differences in judgments of either the abusiveness or the typicality of the various forms of elder maltreatment. Multiple regression analyses revealed that both culture and insecure attachment contributed significantly to judgments of the abusiveness and typicality of aggressive and neglectful behaviors committed by a caretaker against an elderly person.