Animal Studies Of Attachment Flashcards
Who did a study on Goslings?
Lorenz
What was the aim of Lorenz’s Experiment?
To investigate the effects of imprinting.
What was the Procedure of Lorenz’s Research?
-Randomly divided the Goose eggs
-Half hatched with the mother goose in the natural environment
(control group)
-Half hatched in a incubator with Lorenz (Experimental group)
-He recorded the behavior of who they imprinted on
-Once they hatched he mixed them up and observed who they followed
-He measured the Critical period of imprinting
What were Lorenz’s findings?
-Experimental group, imprinted upon Lorenz and followed him
-Control group, imprinted on the mother and followed
-Critical period of imprinting is 12-17 hours, if imprinting does not occur baby goslings wouldn’t attach to a mother figure
-Those who imprinted on humans attempted to mate with humans (sexual imprinting)
What did Lorenz conclude?
-Goslings imprint on the first moving object
-There is specific time period where imprinting needs to take place
What are the Evaluations for Lorenz?
-Practical Application
-animal bias
-researcher bias
Explain the Evaluation of Practical application.
-the principle of the theory, gostlings have to imprint within 12-17 hours otherwise won’t imprint a all
-shows the importance of imprinting on future relationships
-psychologists can use this to show the importance of early interaction
-to reduce issues they may have later on
-important for applied psychology, understand human and animal interaction.
Explain the evaluation of Animal Bias.
-conducted on animals investigating attachment
-human attachment behaviour is more complex than animal attachment behaviour
-human emotions are sophisticated with infants than animals
-e.g two way interaction vs young one attaching
-issues with extrapolating finding of Lorenz
-limited extent
Explain the evaluation of Researcher Bias.
-recorded his own observation
-may have only included the findings which supported his theory
-ignored the goslings who didn’t imprint on him.
-lowers Internal validity
Who conducted a animal study on rhesus monkey’s?
Harlow
What was Harlow’s Aim?
Investigate wether food or comfort was more important when forming a attachment.
Explain Harlow’s Procedure.
-lab experiment on 16 rhesus monkey’s
-seperated from there mothers at birth and placed in cages
-in the cages there are surrogate mothers
-a wire one with food and a cloth mother
What did Harlow measure?
-the amount of time they spent with each mother
-frightened them with a loud noise to see who they’d go to when stressed
-long term effects were recorded e.g sociability,future relationships with offspring.
What did Harlow find?
-Monkey’s spent more time with the comfort mother
-when frightened they went to the comfort mother
-lead to emotional damages such as being timid,easily bullied and difficulty mating.females became inaduquete mothers
What did Harlow Conclude?
Comfort is more important.
