Animal studies of attachment: Lorenz and Harlow

Question 1

Who studied animals?

Answer 1

Lorenz

Harlow

Question 2

What did Lorenz research?

Answer 2

Geese

Question 3

What did Harlow research?

Answer 3

Monkeys

Question 4

What’s was Lorenz’s aim?

Answer 4

To examine the phenomenon of imprinting in non-human animals (where the offspring follows and forms an attachment bond to the first large moving object they see after birth).

Question 5

Describe Lorenz’s procedure

Answer 5

• he randomly divided greylag goose eggs into two batches. One batch, the control group, was hatched naturally by the mother. The second batch, the
  experimental group, were placed in an incubator, with Lorenz making sure he was the first large moving object that the goslings saw after hatching.
• The following behaviour, of either the mother goose or Lorenz, was recorded.
• Lorenz then marked the goslings so he knew in which condition they were hatched and then placed them under an upside-down box. The box was then removed and their following behaviour of the mother goose and Lorenz was recorded again.

Question 6

What were Lorenz’s findings?

Answer 6

• straight after birth the naturally-hatched goslings followed their
  mother goose, whereas the incubator-hatched goslings followed Lorenz.
• When the upside-down box was taken away, the naturally-hatched goslings moved immediately towards their mother, while the incubator-hatched goslings followed Lorenz, showing no attachment to their biological mother. - - - Lorenz noted that this imprinting only occurred within a critical period of 4-25 hours after hatching.
• This relationship persisted over time and proved to be irreversible.

Question 7

What did Lorenz conclude?

Answer 7

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.

Question 8

What was Harlow’s aim?

Answer 8

To examine the extent to which contact comfort and food influences attachment behaviour in baby rhesus monkeys.

Question 9

Describe Harlow’s procedure

Answer 9

He reared 16 baby monkeys with two wire model mothers’. In one condition milk was dispensed by the plain-wire mother whereas in a second condition no milk was dispensed-by the cloth-covered-mother, just comfort.

Question 10

What did Harlow find?

Answer 10

The baby monkeys cuddled the cloth-covered mother in preference to the plain- wire mother and sought comfort from the cloth one when frightened (e.g. by a noisy mechanical teddy bear) regardless of which mother (cloth-covered or plain-wire) dispensed milk.
This showed that ‘contact comfort was of more importance to the monkeys than food when it came to attachment behaviour.

Question 11

How were the monkeys affected in the long term? (Maternal deprivation)

Answer 11

The monkeys reared with plain-wire mothers only were more dysfunctional. However, even those reared with a cloth-covered mother did not develop normal social behaviour. These deprived monkeys were more aggressive and less sociable than other monkeys and they bred less often than is typical for monkeys, being unskilled at mating. When they became mothers, some of the deprived monkeys neglected their young and others attacked their
children, even killing them in some cases.

Question 12

What did Harlow conclude about the critical period?

Answer 12

Harlow concluded that there was a critical period for attachment formation- a mother figure had to be introduced to a young monkey within 90 days for an attachment to form. After this time attachment was impossible and the damage done by early deprivation
became irreversible.