Attachment - animal studies of attachment Flashcards
What is ethology?
Studying animals in their natural environment
What is an animal experiment?
Studying animals in a controlled environment with an IV
What does Darwin state about using animals to study human behaviour?
Humans are descendants from animal ancestors so findings from animal experiments can be extrapolated to humans - learn more about our behaviour
Why are rhesus monkeys often used as animal subjects?
Share 95% of their DNA with humans and seen to experience almost ‘human like’ emotion amongst animals
Lorenz (1935): What is imprinting?
Form of attachment - close contact kept with the first large moving object encountered
Lorenz (1935): What was the procedure?
- Randomly divided clutch of greylag geese eggs: one hatched naturally with mother and one in incubator with Lorenz
- Placed all goslings under box, removed box and recorded who they went to
- He lengthened time in which geese saw the first moving object to see how long the critical period was
Lorenz (1935): What were the findings?
- Naturally-hatched went to mother goose and incubator-hatched went to Lorenz showing no link to biological mother at all
- Imprinting had to occur within 25 hours or geese wouldn’t imprint at all (critical period)
Lorenz (1935): What was the conclusion?
Geese have an innate tendency to imprint and these bonds were irreversible
Lorenz (1935): What does his work inform us about human attachment?
Inspired Bowlby - he argued there’s an innate pre-programming for humans to stay close to primary caregivers
Lorenz’s work also supports critical period and monotropy concepts
Harlow (1958): What was the procedure?
He constructed 2 surrogate mothers (wire/cloth mother)
- 16 baby rhesus monkeys across different conditions: wire moth w/ milk and cloth mother w/o milk
- Recorded time spent with each mother (DV)
- Tested mother preference in times of distress (loud noise)
Harlow (1958): What were the findings?
- Spent more time cuddling with cloth mother than wire despite not providing food - purely physiological bond
- Babies raised with cloth mother had emotional attachment and normal behaviour in stressful situation but those raised with wire struggled to calm down and rocked back and forth
Harlow (1958): What did he find about maternal deprivation?
-‘Rape rack’ used to artificially inseminate isolated mothers when they refused to mate
- Isolated mothers killed their infants
Harlow (1958): What was the conclusion?
- Rhesus monkeys have an innate need for contact comfort as attachment concerns emotional security more than food, contradicting learning theory
- Critical period was 90 days and after this maternal deprivation occured, causing irreversible damage
Harlow (1958): What does his research inform us about human attachment?
Demonstrates importance of emotional bond in human attachments and refutes learning theory as an explanation of attachment
