Animal studies of attachment Flashcards
What concept did Lorenz demonstrate?
imprinting
What is imprinting?
Where animals will attach to the first moving object or person they see directly after birth
What was Lorenz’s procedure?
Lorenz 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
What did Lorenz find?
The incubator group followed Lorenz everywhere whereas the control group, hatched in the presence of the mother, followed her.
What did Lorenz find when the two groups were mixed up?
The control group continued to follow the mother and the experimental group followed Lorenz
What period did Lorenz identify that imprinting had to take place?
the critical period
What did Lorenz find if imprinting didn’t occur within the critical period?
chicks did not attach themselves to a mother figure
What is sexual imprinting?
animals will attach to and display sexual behaviours towards the first moving object or animal they see directly after birth
What case did Lorenz report with sexual imprinting?
a peacock who was born surrounded by turtles only desired to mate with turtles in later life
What is a weakness of Lorenz’s research? (contradictory evidence)
There is contradictory evidence with relation to the longevity of imprinting
Guitan et al (1966) - chickens that imprinted on yellow washing up gloves would try to mate with them as adults but eventually learned to prefer mating with other chickens
Suggests the impact of imprinting on mating behaviour is not as permanent as Lorenz believed
What is a weakness of Lorenz’s research? (bias)
Has been criticised for being subject to researcher bias
Lorenz wanted to support his idea and therefore may have interpreted data in a way which fits with his hypothesis
Therefore findings may lack validity
What was the aim of Harlow’s study?
to investigate whether food or comfort was more important in forming a bond
What was Harlow’s procedure?
Harlow tested the idea that a soft object serves some of the functions of a mother. In one experiment he reared 16 baby monkeys with two wire model ‘mothers’ (one plain and one cloth covered). In one condition milk was dispensed by the plain wire mother whereas in a second condition the milk was dispensed by the cloth covered mother
What did Harlow find?
The baby monkeys cuddled the cloth-covered object in preference to the wire one and sought comfort from the cloth covered one when frightened regardless of which dispensed milk. This showed that ‘contact comfort’ was of more importance to the monkey than food when it came to attachment behaviour
What is a weakness of Harlow’ study? (ethics)
Study can be considered unethical
Separation of baby monkeys causes stress and long term harm
Female monkeys went on to be inadequate mothers
However, would be considered significantly unethical to use human children
Thus, justifying the ‘cost’ of the monkeys distress as the benefits outweigh it
