A - Animal Studies of attachment Flashcards
what are the different animal studies of attachment
- Lorenz’s study of geese - imprinting
- Harlow’s study of rhesus monkey’s
what did Lorenz study with geese
- examined imprinting
- when an animal attaches to the first moving object they see they follow it
- occurs within 4-25h of hatching (evolutionary advantage)
how did Lorenz complete his study
- divided clutch of gosling eggs in half
- control group: hatched with the mother
- experimental group: hatched in an incubator - saw Lorenz
results of the gosling study
CONTROL GROUP: followed the mother
EXPERIMENTAL GROUP: followed Lorenz (first moving object seen)
AO3 of Lorenz’s animal study of imprinting
+ real world example of animal imprinting
- lack of generalisability to other animals
- Guiton does not support the idea of sexual imprinting being permanent (learnt to mate later with chickens rather than glove)
what did Harlow study with monkeys
- examined if contact comfort or food was more important in attachment formation
what was Harlow’s procedure
2 surrogate mothers: a harsh ‘wire’ mother and one soft ‘towelling’ mother
- 16 baby monkeys in 4 conditions
- DV is number of times monkeys go to each mother
what were the 4 different conditions in Harlow’s study
1 - wire mother offers milk, towelling mother doesn’t
2 - towelling mother offers milk, wire mother doesn’t
3 - wire mother offers milk, no towelling present
4 - towelling mother offers milk, no wire present
what were Harlow’s results
preferred contact comfort in all conditions.
preferred contact comfort over food, monkeys showed stress in wire conditions
what were Harlow’s conclusions
innate drive for cotac comfort suggesting attachment form through emotional needs for security rather than food
what did Harlow note after longer observation
- the monkeys were socially dysfunctional
- they were aggressive to babies and killed them
- LINKS TO IWM and MDH
