Animal studies of Attachment

Question 1

What is imprinting

Answer 1

A survival instinct of certain animals to follow the largest moving object they see when they are born

Question 2

What did Lorenz study originally

Answer 2

• Studied it in goslings(baby ducks)
• Experiment-divided clutch of gosling eggs in half:

Control group-hatched with mother

Experimental group- hatched in an incubator, Lorenz was first large moving object they see

Recorded the behaviour of geese- who would they follow? Control group followed mother- experimental group followed Lorenz

Geese in a box-where will they go - those imprinted on Lorenz went to him and those imprinted on the mother went to the mother

Question 3

What was Lorenz’s second study

Answer 3

Lorenz 1952- the peacock and the tortoise

• Looked at a peacock who had been raised in a zoo reptile house
• Peacock showed courtship behaviour towards the tortoise
• Suggests sexual imprinting but also suggests that imprinting is permanent

Question 4

What was the Guiton et al study

Answer 4

Guiton et al(1966)
* The chicken and the yellow washing up glove

• Guiton et al found that the chicken were imprinted on the gloves
• Chickens did later learnt to mate with other chickens- suggesting not as irreversible as Lorenz first proposed

Question 5

What did Harlow study?

Answer 5

• Examined if contact comfort or food was more important in attachment formation in rhesus monkeys(closest to human)
• 2 surrogate mothers- one harsh “wire mother”, one soft “towelling mother”
• 16 baby monkeys, 4 conditions:
• Wire mother-milk and towelling mother provides no milk
• Wire mother-no milk and towelling mother milk
• Only have access to wire mother who offers milk
• Only have access to towelling mother who offers milk

Question 6

What were the results of Harlow’s study

Answer 6

• Preferences of mothers- number of times they go for contact comfort or food
• In all 4 conditions they preferred contact comfort over food. Monkeys that were consistently with wired mothers showed signs of distress- diarrhoea, rocking
• Conclusion- innate drive for contact comfort suggesting attachment forms through emotional need for security rather than food
• Harlow found that when the baby monkeys grew up, they were terrible parents with some attacking young and some killing their young- possibly because they had no framework for attachment/parenting

Question 7

AO3 of Harlow’s experiment

Answer 7

The extraneous variable is that the mother’s heads are different on both models as the towelling mother looks more like a monkey then the other model. Not confounding because we can’t be sure if it made a huge difference

Ethics- long-term physical+ psychological harm and no informed consent or right to withdraw.

Rhesus monkey’s are not humans so we cannot generalise

Howe(1998) suggested that the study has real world applications as his study states that babies prefer contact comfort over food so therefore can be applied to care settings + parenting as it highlights security and sensitive responding