Attachment: Animal Studies Of Attachment

Question 1

What psychologist first observed imprinting

Answer 1

• Lorenz
• found newly hatched goslings attach to the first moving object they see

Question 2

What was the procedure of Lorenz’s study

Answer 2

• randomly divided a clutch of goose eggs
• half hatched with their mother in their natural environment and half hatched in an incubator where they saw Lorenz first

Question 3

What we’re the findings of lorenz’s study

Answer 3

• incubator group followed lorenz everywhere
• even when mixed with the control group, the experimental group continued to follow lorenz
• Lorenz identified a ‘critical period’ where imprinting needs to take place

Question 5

What is sexual imprinting

Answer 5

• Lorenz observed that birds that imprinted on a human would later display courtship behaviour towards humans
• conducted a case study on a peacock + found when it was reared in a reptile house, later in its life it would only direct courtship behaviour to giant tortoises

Question 6

What are the two evaluation points for Lorenz’s study

Answer 6

• limited generals ability to humans - mammalian mothers display more emotional attachment than birds
• some of Lorenz’s observations have been questioned - guiton et al - found chicken imprinting on washing up gloves would try to mate with them but would grow out of this

Question 7

Outline Harlows procedure

Answer 7

• tested the idea that a soft object serves some of the functions of a mother
• reared 16 babies monkeys with 2 wire model ‘mothers’
• in one condition, milk was dispensed by the wire mother, in the other it was dispensed by the cloth covered mother

Question 8

Outline Harlows findings

Answer 8

• baby monkeys cuddled the cloth mother in preference to the wire one, and sought comfort from the soft mother, regardless of which dispensed milk
• shows that ‘contact comfort’ is more important to monkeys than food in attachments

Question 9

What happened to the maternally deprived monkeys as adults in Harlows study

Answer 9

• monkeys deprived of a ‘real’ mother and reared only with the wire mother were the most dysfunctional
• even those reared with the cloth mother were dysfunctional, they were all more aggressive and less sociable
• as mothers, some of the deprived mother neglected their young + in some cases, attacked them

Question 10

What did Harlow argue about the ‘critical period’

Answer 10

• a mother figure had to be introduced to an infant monkey within 90 days for an attachment to form

Question 11

What are the three evaluation points for Harlows research

Answer 11

• theoretical value - emphasised importance of contact comfort, helps us understand human relationships
• practical value - helps social workers under risk factors in child neglect/abuse to better prevent it (Howe)
• ethical issues - monkeys suffered greatly, similar to humans so suffered human like psychological distress + Harlow referred to the wire mothers as ‘iron maidens’ after a medieval torture device