Animal Studies Of Attachment Flashcards
Who were the two key researchers in this area?
Lorenz’s Goslings (1935)
Harlow’s Monkeys (1959)
Imprinting
The formation of a special bond an animal makes on the first moving thing they see after birth.
What did Lorenz investigate?
The idea of imprinting
What was Lorenz’s method of investigating imprinting?
He took a clutch of goose eggs and divided them into two groups.
Control group: left with their natural mother
Experimental group: eggs were placed in an incubator.
When these hatched, the first moving thing they saw was Lorenz whereas the first moving thing the control group eggs saw was their biological mother.
He then observed the behaviour of the goslings whilst he interacted with them.
What were the results of Lorenz’s investigation into imprinting?
The experimental group followed Lorenz everywhere, whereas the control group followed the mother goose. Furthermore, Lorenz geese showed no recognition of their biological mother.
Lorenz found that a young animal will form an attachment to a moving object within its critical period of up to 2 days. Lack of such an object will mean failure to form primary attachment .
Found that animals (especially birds) choose to mate with the same kind of animal they imprinted on (sexual imprinting)
Critical period of goslings
Up to 2 days
Sexual imprinting
Animals (especially birds) will choose to mate with the same kind of animals which they imprinted on
What was the conclusion of Lorenz’s investigation into imprinting?
Animals form attachments based on imprinting.
Imprinting occurs due to evolutionary need to form attachments in order to increase the chance of the animals survival
What was the background of Harlow’s monkeys investigation?
Harlow suggested that attachment could result from contact comfort with the mother instead of feeding.
What was the method of Harlow’s investigation into contact comfort?
Harlow placed monkeys that were raised in isolation until they were 8 months old (so that they missed their critical period of up to 90 days) into cages with two “surrogate” mothers.
One mother was made of wire and dispensed milk.
The other was made of a wooden block covered in a soft towel and provided comfort to the monkeys
What were the findings of Harlow’s investigation into contact comfort?
Baby monkeys spent more time with towel mother than wire mother to feel comfort.
When frightened, they went to towel mother - shows that ‘contact comfort’ is of greater importance than food to monkeys when it comes to attachment
Harlow followed up on these monkeys and found that later in life, those that did have contact comfort developed abnormally; showing both abnormal social interactions and mating behaviours towards other monkeys.
Harlow concluded that this may be due to them missing their critical period and not forming healthy attachments during this period
What were the conclusions of Harlow’s investigation into contact comfort?
Attachments form based on ‘contact comfort’ and social interaction rather than food.
The learning theory of attachment (attachment based on providing food) is too simplistic
A strength of Lorenz’s animal research is that there is supporting evidence for the idea of sexual imprinting and imprinting in general.
Guiton (1966) found that leghorn chicks that were fed using yellow rubber gloves in their first few weeks of life became imprinted to the gloves.
He also found that male chicks tried to mate with the gloves.
Strength bc it shows that young animals are not born with the innate desire to imprint to a specific animal, but will bond with any moving thing present during their critical period.
This demonstrates the importance of imprinting on attachment formation in animals and shows that imprinting can also affect the characteristics of a desirable mate.
Increases validity of Lorenz’s conclusions.
A weakness of animal research into attachment is that it is difficult to extrapolate these findings to humans.
It is clear that human infants are significantly more complex that animals (e.g, showing much greater emotional attachments to adults). Additionally, and significantly, the critical period appears to be very different in human infants (0-14 months) (Bowlby) compared to rhesus monkeys (90 days) and geese (up to 2 days). This is a weakness as it makes it difficult to generalise the findings of Lorenz and Harlow directly to humans because attachment behaviour and concepts like critical period, are very different between humans and animals. Therefore, animal research into attachment reduces in validity when applying it to understand human attachment. (external validity)
A weakness of Lorenz’ research is that the effects of imprinting are not as permanent as he believed.
Hoffman argued that imprinting was a “plastic” mechanism, meaning it can be reversed and is flexible. Guiton (1966) found that he could reverse the imprinting in chickens who tried to mate with a glove. He found that after spending time with their own species, they were able to engage in normal sexual behaviour with other chickens. This is a weakness as it shows the impact of imprinting on mating behaviour is not fixed and can be changed with experience, unlike what Lorenz believed. Therefore, Lorenz appears to have overestimated the effect of imprinting on the development of sexual and attachment behaviour, thus his conclusions reduce in validity.
