Animals And Attachment Flashcards
Who investigated animals and attachment?
- Harlow (1958)
- Lorenz
Harlow study outline
Reared 6 baby’s monkeys with 2 wire model mothers. One was a plain wire mother which dispensed milk and the other was a cloth mother with no milk.
Harlow’s findings + Conclusion
- baby’s monkeys spent more time with cloth mother rather than plain wire mother.
- sought comfort from cloth mother when frightened regardless of which mother dispensed milk
Contact comfort was of more importance to baby monkeys than food in attachment behaviour.
Long term effects of Harlow’s findings on monkeys
- more aggressive and less sociable
- those with plain mother were most dysfunctional
- neglected their own young, attacked and even killed them
Lorenz study outline
Randomly divided a clutch of goose eggs. Half were hatched with the mother and the other half hatched in an incubator. Control group saw mother first and incubator group saw Lorenz first.
What were Lorenz’s findings?
The control group followed the mother and the incubator group followed Lorenz.
When mixed the control group went to the mother and the incubator group went to Lorenz.
Lorenz’s conclusions
- Imprinting was where bird species attached to and followed the first moving object they saw.
- Identified critical period for imprinting
What is sexual imprinting?
Where birds who imprint on a different species later only direct courtship behaviour to that species.
Lorenz observed this in a peacock reared in a reptile house that displayed courtship behaviour to tortoises.
Evaluative points for attachment in animals
- Strength - Harlow’s findings have practical value
- Limitation - Harlow’s research was unethical
- Limitation - Lorenz’s findings and conclusions cannot be generalised to humans.
Strength - practical value of Harlow’s findings
Harlow’s findings have a practical value, for example in helping social workers and clinical psychologists understand how a lack of binding can damage a child’s development. This allows them to intervene and prevent poor outcomes. It’s also useful in farming; orphan lambs are less likely to survive without a mother figure to attach to and so the fleece of a dead lamb is wrapped around it and it is raised by a mother sheep as if it were her own offspring. This ensures it’s survival. The importance of attachment is now recognised for babies in zoos and breeding programmes in the wild, and this helps make the animals healthier.
Limitation - Harlow’s research is unethical
However, Harlow’s research is heavily unethical. It caused severe and long term distress to the monkeys, making them aggressive and less sociable, causing them to breed less often and neglect and attack their own young when they became mothers. This has made them suffer permanently. However, his conclusions have important theoretical and practical applications; his predictions have furthered our understanding into attachment behaviour in humans and improved the conditions of children in childcare and baby animals who are part of breeding programs.
Limitation - Lorenz’s findings and conclusions cannot be generalised to humans
Moreover, Lorenz’s findings and conclusions cannot be generalised to humans as attachment in mammals is different than in birds; in mammals is it a two-way process between the mother and baby whereas in birds it is only one way. This means it is not appropriate to use Lorenz’s findings to predict attachment behaviour in humans.
