Animal studies of attachment

Question 1

What research did Lorenz conduct?

Answer 1

Lorenz (1935):
AIM: To look at the relationships between infant animals and their mothers.

PARTICIPANTS: Geese

PROCEDURE: Lorenz set up an experiment in which he randomly divided a clutch of goose eggs. Half of the eggs were hatched with the mother goose in their natural environment. The other half were 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 their mother everywhere. When the two groups mixed, the control group continued to follow their mother and the incubator group followed Lorenz

• This phenomenon is known as imprinting whereby bird species that are mobile from birth attach to and follow the first moving object they see.

Question 2

What is sexual imprinting?

Answer 2

• Lorenz investigated the relationship between imprinting and adult mate preferences.
• He observed that birds that imprinted on a human would often later display courtship behaviour towards humans.
• Lorenz (1952) - described a peacock that had been reared in the reptile house of a zoo where the first moving objects the peacock saw after hatching were giant tortoises. As an adult, this bird would only direct courtship behaviour towards giant tortoises (sexual imprinting)

Question 3

What is the critical period for imprinting?

Answer 3

• It is as brief as a few hours after hatching depending on the species. If imprinting does not occur, then Lorenz found chicks did not attach themselves to a mother figure.

Question 4

What research did Harlow conduct?

Answer 4

Harlow (1958):
AIM: To find out how and why rhesus monkeys bond with their mothers

PARTICIPANTS: Rhesus monkeys

PROCEDURE: Tested the idea that a soft object serves the function of a mother. In one experiment he reared 16 rhesus monkeys with two wire model ‘mothers’. In one condition milk was dispensed by the plain wire mother whereas in a second condition, the milk was dispensed by a cloth-covered mother.

FINDINGS: The baby monkeys cuddled the soft object in preference to the wire one and sought comfort from the cloth one when frightened regardless of which dispensed milk.

CONCLUSION: This showed that ‘contact comfort’ was of more importance to the monkeys than food when it came to attachment behaviour

Question 5

How did the Maternally deprived monkeys act as adults?

Answer 5

• The monkeys that were deprived of a ‘real’ mother were followed into adulthood to see if early maternal deprivation had a permanent effect.
• The monkeys who were reared to a wired mother were the most dysfunctional.
• None of the Rhesus monkeys (wired or clothed mothers) developed normal social behaviour. They were more aggressive, less sociable and bred less than other monkeys. When they became mothers they often neglected their offspring sometimes even killing them.

Question 6

What is the critical period for normal development deduced by Harlow?

Answer 6

• A mother figure has to be introduced within the first 90 days for an attachment to form. After this time, attachment was impossible and the damage done by early deprivation became irreversible.

Question 7

(AO3) What is a weakness of Lorenz’s study?
(1)

Answer 7

Generalisability to humans:

• Although some of his findings have influenced our understanding of human development, there is a problem in generalising from findings on birds to humans.
• It seems that the mammalian attachment system is quite different from that in birds (mammalian mothers show more emotional attachment to young)
• This means that it is not appropriate to try to generalise any of Lorenz’s ideas to humans.

Question 8

(AO3) What is a weakness of Lorenz’s study?
(1)

Answer 8

Questionable observations:

• Later researchers have questioned some of Lorenz’s conclusions i.e. the idea that imprinting has a permanent effect on mating behaviour.
• Guiton et al (1966) found that chickens imprinted on yellow washing-up gloves and would try to mate with them as adults, but with experience, they eventually learned to prefer mating with other chickens.
• This suggests that the impact of imprinting on mating behaviour is not as permanent as Lorenz believed.

Question 9

(AO3) What is the strength of Harlow’s study?

Answer 9

Theoretical value:

• The findings have had a profound effect on psychologists’ understanding of human mother-infant attachment.
• Most importantly, Harlow showed that attachment does not develop as a result of being fed by a mother figure but as a result of contact comfort. Harlow also showed us the importance of the quality of early relationships for later social development including the ability to hold down adult relationships and successfully rear children.

Question 10

(AO3) What is the weakness of Harlow’s study?

Answer 10

Ethical issues:

• Harlow faced severe criticism for the ethics of his research
• The monkeys suffered greatly as a result of Harlow’s procedures. This species is considered similar enough to humans to be able to generalise the findings, which also means that the suffering was presumably quite human-like. Harlow himself was well aware of the suffering he caused - Halow referred to the wire mothers as ‘iron maidens’ after a medieval torture device.
• The counter-argument is that Harlow’s research was sufficiently important to justify the effects.