Animal studies of attachment Flashcards
why are animal studies used
Animal studies are carried out in psychology for ethical or practical reasons.
Lorenz (1935)
Aim: to examine the phenomenon of imprinting in non-human animals
Procedure: Lorenz set up a classic experiment in which he randomly divided a large clutch of goose eggs. Half the eggs were hatched with the mother goose in their natural environment. The other half hatched in an incubator where the first moving object they saw was Lorenz.
Findings: the incubator group followed Lorenz everywhere, whereas the control group followed the mother goose. When the two groups were mixed up the control group continued to follow the mother and the experimental group followed Lorenz. This is called imprinting, where the offspring follows and forms an attachment bond to the first large moving object they see after birth. Lorenz identified a critical period in which imprinting needs to take place. This can be as brief as a few hours after hatching. If imprinting doesn’t occur within that time Lorenz found that chicks did not attach themselves to a mother figure.
Conclusion: these results suggest that imprinting is a form of attachment that is exhibited by birds that typically leave the nest early, whereby they imprint onto the first large moving object they encounter after hatching.
Harlow (1959)
Aim: to examine the extent to which contact comfort and food influences attachment behaviour in baby rhesus monkeys.
Procedure: Harlow constructed two surrogate mothers: one harsh ‘wire mother’ and a second soft ‘towelling mother’. A sample of 16 baby monkeys were used across 4 conditions.
The amount of time the monkey spend with each mother was recorded, alongside how long they spent feeding at each one. To test for mother preference during stress, the monkeys were startled with a loud noise and responses were recorded.
Findings: the baby monkeys cuddled the towelling mother in preference to the wire mother and sought comfort from the towelling mother when frightened regardless of which mother dispensed milk. This showed that contact comfort was of more importance to monkeys than food when it came to attachment behaviour.
Conclusion: Harlow concluded that the baby monkeys appear to have an innate drive to seek contact comfort from their parent suggesting that attachment is formed through an emotional need for security rather than food, which is in contrast to the learning theory explanation. The researchers found the maternal deprivation had severe consequences – the deprived monkeys were more aggressive and less sociable and when they became mothers, some of the deprived monkeys neglected their young.
Evaluation of Animal studies of attachment (brief)
strength - regolin and vallortigara HOWEVER lacks generalisability
strength - real world application
strength - applications to understanding human behaviour
strengths of animal studies of attachment
research support for concept of imprinting. A study by Regolin and Vallortigara supports Lorenz’s idea. Chicks were exposed to shape combinations that moved. A range of shape combinations were then moved in front of them and they followed the original most closely. This supports the view that young animals are born with an innate mechanism to imprint on a moving object present in the critical window of development, as predicted by Lorenz. HOWEVER, there is issues with generalisability as humans cognitive ability and language comprehension is much more complex than animals. This means we cannot assume that attachment for humans is developed through comfort over whoever feeds them. Therefore, increasing our confidence in assuming that attachment is learnt in humans.
important real-world applications. For example, it has helped social workers and clinical psychologists understand that a lack of bonding experience may be a risk factor in child development allowing them to intervene to prevent poor outcomes. We also now understand the importance of attachment figures for baby monkeys in zoos and breeding programmes in the wild. This means that the value of Harlow’s research is not just theoretical but also practical.
has applications to understanding human behaviour. Although human attachment is very different from that in birds there have been attempts to use the idea of imprinting to explain human behaviours. For example, Seebach suggested that computer users exhibit ‘baby duck syndrome’ - which is the attachment formed to their first computer operating system, leading them to reject others.
