Animal studies of attachment

Question 1

AO1 -
-Rhesus macaque monkeys have biological for contact comfort
- form attachments for comfort not food

Answer 1

AO1 -
- Lorenz took eggs of a greyly goose, divided them into two groups
- one group with mum and other in incubator
- Lorenz was the fist moving object they saw, imitated quad of mum goose
- he mixed both groups together to see who they followed

Question 2

AO1 -
- Lorenz found that the goslings imprinted on the fist moving object
- when mixed they followed the thing they imprinted on
- critical time period for imprinting is 12 to 17 hours.
- if the goslings didn’t see a moving object in this time frame they lose the ability to imprint/form attachment bond

Answer 2

AO1 -
Lorenz research shows imprinting is innate and a biological feature in attachment
- he said the same is for humans - critical time period for attachments

Question 3

AO1 -
-Harlow separated rhesus macaque monkeys from their biological mothers at birth and put them in the cage
- they had surrogate mothers, one mother was made of plain wire with milk , the other one was cloth
-it was recorded how much time was spent with each

Answer 3

AO1 -
- Harlow found that most of the time, the monkeys were with the cloth mother, they would only go to the wire mother when hungry

Question 4

AO3-
P: strength, applied to human behaviour
E: Harlow found attachment develops through contact comfort and not being fed
E: this contrasts with cupboard love theory
L: extended knowledge of human attachment behaviours

Answer 4

AO3 -
P: weakness, breach ethical guidlines
E: Harlow separated his monkeys at birth, they had psychological harm
E: could not replicate study
L: not ethical

Question 5

P: weakness, not generalisable to human behaviour
E: human attachment system very different to birds
E: human mothers show much more emotional attachment to their young
L: not generalisable to human behaviour