animal studies Flashcards
Why do we use animal studies in attatchments
-attatchment like behavior is common in a wide range of species so it can better help us understand human attatchments
-No ethical violations
Lorenz’s procedure
-Randomly divide a clutch of geese
-half hatch with mother goose (control)
-half hatched in an incubator with the first moving object they see being Lorenz (experiment)
-Muddled them up and observed which geese followed who
Lorenz’s findings
Group which hatched with mother goose
followed her
Group that hatched in incubator and saw
Lorenz as the first moving object
followed him around
Lorenz’s conclusions
Called this imprinting – bird species
attach to and follow the first moving
object they see.
Lorenz said there was a critical period
which imprinting needs to take place.
If imprinting does not occur during this
critical period, then the babies don’t
attach themselves to a mother figure.
Harlows procedure
Harlow reared 16 rhesus monkeys with two wire
models ‘mothers’.
One wire model was plain wire.
The other was covered in a soft
cloth.
The plain wire mother dispensed
milk whilst the soft cloth mother
did not.
Measured time spent with each
monkey.
Harlows findings
The baby monkeys preferred to
cuddle and spend time with the
soft cloth covered mother when
frightened.
On average the monkeys spent 18
hours a day with the soft cloth
mother.
The monkeys would only go to the
plain wire mother for food and then
would go straight back to the soft
cloth mother
Harlowsd conclusions
Concluded that ‘contact
comfort’ was of more
importance to the
monkeys than food when
it came to attachment
behaviour.
What happens to maternally deprived monkeys as adults
Harlow followed these monkeys
into adulthood to see if this
maternal deprivation had
permanent effects.
The found that these monkeys
were more aggressive and less
sociable than other monkeys.
When the monkeys became
mothers, some of the deprived
monkeys neglected their young
and others attacked their
children, even killing them in
some cases.
After no bonding in the critical period (90 days) the damage of early deprivation was irreversable
