Attachment - animal studies of attachment Flashcards
Lorenz’s geese (Imprinting) - the procedure
Divided large clutch of goose eggs
- One half were hatched with the mother goose in their natural environment
-Other half hatched in an incubator where the first moving object they saw was Lorenz
Mixed all goslings together to see whom they would follow
Lorenz’s geese - the findings
Incubator group followed Lorenz, control group followed the mother
Identified a critical period in which imprinting needs to take place e.g few hours after hatching
If imprinting did not occur within that time, chicks did not attach themselves to the mother figure
Sexual imprinting also occurs whereby the birds acquire a template of the desirable characteristics required in a mate
A03:
Applications to human behaviour
Concept of imprinting can explain some human behaviour
e.g baby duck syndrome in whch computer users become attached to their first operating system
Meaning that imprinting is a meaningful process in humans aswell as birds
A03:
One strength is support for the concept of imprinting
Regolin and Vallortigara exposed chicks to simple shape- combinations that moved
When shown a range of moving shapes the chicks followed these in preference to other shapes
Suggesting that young animals are born with an innate mechanism to imprint on a moving object
A03:
One limitation is generalising from birds to humans
The mammalian attachment system is quite different from imprinting in birds
e.g mammalian mothers show more emotional attachment to their young
Meaning that it may not be appropiate to generalise Lorenz’s ideas about imprinting to humans
Harlow’s Monkeys - Importance of contact comfort
Procedure
Reared 16 rhesus monkeys with two wire model ‘mothers’
Condition 1 - milk was dispensed by the plain-wire ‘mother’
Condition 2 - milk was dispensed by the cloth-covered ‘mother’
Monkey’s preferences were measured
Harlow observed how the monkeys reacted when placed in a frightening situations e.g adding a noisy mechanical teddy bear to the environment
Continued to study the monkeys who had been deprived of their ‘real’ mother into adulthood
Harlow’s Monkeys’s - findings
Monkeys cuddled cloth covered mother in preference to the plain wire mother regardless of which dispensed milk - suggesting contact comfort was more important than food when it came to attachment behaviour
Sought comfort from cloth coverede mother when frightened
As adults, the monkeys who had been deprived of their real mother suffered severe consequences e.g more agressive, less social/skilled in mating than other monkeys
A03:
One strength is that Harlow’s research has real-world value
Has helped social workers understand the risk factors in child abuse and thus intervene to prevent it
We also now understand the importance of attachment figures for baby monkeys in zoos and breeding programmes
Meaning the research has benefitted both animals and humans
A03:
One limitation is generalising from monkeys to humans
Monkeys are clearly more similar to humans than lorenz’s geese, and all mammals share some similarities in their attachment systems
However, they aren’t human and in some ways human mind and behaviour are much more complex
Meaning may not be appropiate to generalise the findings to humans
A03:
Ethical issues
Procedures caused severe long term distress to the monkey participants though research led to useful applications
However findings and conclusions may have important theoretical and practical applications
Suggesting in spite of benefits the research perhaps should not have been carriede out
