Animal studies into attachment

Question 1

Lorenz’s goslings - procedure

Answer 1

Divided a set of goose eggs into two batches
One hatched naturally, one placed in an incubator
Incubator group - made sure he was the first large moving object they saw
Marked all the goslings so he knew which group they were from and he observed their behaviour

Question 2

Lorenz’s goslings - findings

Answer 2

Naturally hatched goslings followed their mother
Incubator hatched goslings followed Lorenz
When all the goslings were released from an upturned box they would split and go straight to Lorenz or their mother
Said this imprinting process occurs between 13 and 16 hours after hatching

Question 3

Lorenz’s goslings - conclusion

Answer 3

Animals will imprint on the first large moving object they see and follow it round
Serves a survival purpose - goslings follow their mother who will provide them with food and shelter
Supports the claim that attachment is a biological process and not learnt

Question 4

Lorenz’s goslings AO3

Answer 4

Reliable - well controlled so can be repeated to check the results
Research support - Lorenz studied a peacock that had been raised near giant tortoises in a zoo. When the peacock was an adult, it would attempt to court giant tortoises. Suggests the peacock had experienced sexual imprinting
Difficult to generalise - difficult to apply to human babies. Birds are mobile from a young age and so are able to follow their mother whereas humans are only mobile by 8-9 months so they don’t need to imprint within the first day of birth

Question 5

Harlow’s monkeys - procedure

Answer 5

16 rhesus monkeys who had been separated from their parents within the first 12 hours of life
Placed them in separate cages with two ‘substitute mothers’
For 8 monkeys - wire mother dispensed milk from a bottle and cloth mother didn’t
Other 8 monkeys - cloth mother dispensed milk from a bottle but wire mother didn’t
Observed amount of time spent spent with each mother
Studied for 165 days

Question 6

Harlow’s monkeys - findings

Answer 6

Spent considerably more time with the cloth mother regardless of whether it dispensed food or not
When frightened with a noisy robot at the end of their cage, all monkeys clung to the cloth mother
Later in life, the monkeys reared in isolation, struggled to form good relationships, had difficulty mating, were timid and the females were inadequate mothers

Question 7

Harlow’s monkeys - conclusion

Answer 7

Attachment not based on food but on comfort

The absence of an attachment bond with a real mother can lead to social and behavioural problems in adulthood.

Question 8

Harlow’s monkeys AO3

Answer 8

Control - monkeys were socially isolated and so couldn’t form any other attachments to make up for the lack of a mother figure.
Ethical issues - inflicted long term psychological damage on the monkeys and affected their social behaviour in later life. Clear case of psychological harm.
Confounding variable - other researchers have pointed out the face of the cloth mother looks a lot more appealing than the face of the wire mothers which could have influenced the results