Animal studies of attachment

• Who carried out the investigation involving geese?

  Konrad Lorenz
• What did Konrad Lorenz do?

  • Separated clutch of goose eggs
  • Half the eggs left in nest with mother, the other half kept in an incubator
  • When the incubator eggs hatched, Lorenz was the first moving object they saw
• What were the results of Lorenz' investigation?

  • Goslings from nest followed the mother, goslings from incubator followed Lorenz
  • Incubated goslings were marked, then when incubated goslings were reunited with the others they still followed Lorenz
  • This behaviour is known as imprinting
• What is imprinting?


  Recognising a mother figure and forming an attachment with/following them around in order to survive and be looked after. This is innate in geese.
• What 2 things did Konrad Lorenz claim about imprinting?

  • If imprinting didn't occur within a particular time frame, it would never happen. This is called the critical period.
  • Lorenz claimed when a bird imprints on the 'wrong' species (e.g. a human) the bird will be unable to reproduce and form bonds with other birds later in life
• Who conducted the animal research including monkeys?

  Harry Harlow
• Briefly explain what Harlow did:

  • Separated monkeys from biological mother
  • Given the choice of a wire mother and a cloth-covered mother
  • For some, wire mother had milk bottle, for others the cloth mother did
  • Both sets of monkeys spent more time on the cloth covered mother despite where milk was
  • Scared monkeys using moving loud object, and monkeys ran to cloth mother
  • In new environment with new things, monkeys openly explored only if cloth mother was present
• What did the results of Harlows experiment indicate?

  That monkeys value contact comfort over the ability to provide food
• How did Harlow's monkeys behave when they grew up?

  • Didn't know how to react around other monkeys - freezing or fleeing
  • Showed abnormal mating behaviours
  • Harlow artificially inseminated some monkeys and they didn't cradle their own babies
• What was the critical period for the monkeys?

  Could recover if socialised with other monkeys before they reached 3 months old.
• What are the weaknesses of Lorenz' research?

  • Generalisation - animals and humans are physiologically different and so may form attachments in different ways
  • Ethical issues - The geese suffered an inability to form bonds with other geese and reproduce once they reached adulthood
• What are the strengths of Lorenz' research?

  • His research has been highly influential for other psychologists, e.g. Bowlby to prove that attachment happens within a specific time frame and is a biological process
  • Ecological validity as he conducted the experiment in the natural habitat of the geese, but could be counter-argued as half were raised in incubators and Lorenz is not a goose so could not fully act as one
• What are the weaknesses of Harlow's research?

  • Low ecological validity - conducted in a laboratory so monkeys may not have acted as they would in a natural setting
  • Ethical issues - monkeys separated from their mother and were proved to struggle to interact with other monkeys and reproduce in adulthood. Those that were inseminated didn't cradle their own babies
  • Confounding variable - wire mother and cloth mother had different heads. Cloth mother had head which more closely resembled a monkey so his results may be unreliable
• What are the strengths of Harlow's research?

  • His research was replicable as it was conducted in a laboratory and control variables were used. His research established cause and effect and was therefore possible to be recreated.
  • His research was highly influential in the field of attachment and so it could be argued that the results of him conducting the research outweigh the ethical issues surrounding it