Animal studies of attachment Flashcards
What did experiment did Lorenz carry out?
He used goose eggs and hatched half of them in an incubator and half with their mother in a natural environment. The first thing the incubator group saw when they hatched was him whereas the other group followed their mother. This is called imprinting as there is a critical period of a few hours after hatching when imprinting must take place and if imprinting does not take place in that time, chicks do not attach to a mother figure.
What did Lorenz find about sexual imprinting?
He observed that birds imprinted on a human would display courtship to a human and he also did a case study where a peacock was reared in a reptile house. The first moving object seen after birth was a giant tortoise and so the peacock directed courtship behaviour towards giant tortoises, which means it had undergone sexual imprinting.
What are the weaknesses of Lorenz’s research?
It is hard to generalise the findings to humans as birds are very different to humans as they show less emotional attachment to their young.
Some of Lorenz’s observations have been questioned as Guiton found that chickens imprinted on a yellow glove tried to mate with them as adults but eventually they learned to prefer other chickens, suggesting it isn’t as permanent as Lorenz suggested.
What experiment did Harlow carry out?
He reared 16 baby rhesus monkeys with wire monkeys, one had a food dispenser and the other had a cloth-covered mother. It was found that they preferred the comfort from the cloth mother rather than food, showing the importance of contact comfort.
What else did Harlow look into?
He looked at maternally deprived monkeys as adults and found that neither the monkeys reared with wire mothers and food or the soft mother developed normally. They were more aggressive and less sociable than other monkeys and as mothers, they neglected their young.
He also looked at the critical period for normal development and concluded it was 90 days before maternal deprivation became irreversible.
What are the strengths of Harlow’s research?
There is theoretical value as he showed attachments are formed as a result of contact comfort and he also showed the importance of early relationships.
There is practical application to help social workers understand child abuse as well as helping care for captive monkeys.
What are the weaknesses of Harlow’s research?
There are ethical issues involved with Harlow’s research as the monkeys suffered from the experiment.
Can Harlow’s research be applied to humans as monkeys are still a very different animal to humans.
