Lorenz's theory of imprinting

• Lorenz demonstrated how incubator-hatched geese would imprint on the first suitable moving stimulus they saw shortly after hatching
• The goslings would imprint on Lornez himself, as he is often depicted being followed by a gaggle of geese who had imprinted on him. Lorenz also found geese would imprint on inanimate objects
• Lorenz's experiments were as scientific as they could be, for example:

  • goose eggs were randomly divided
  • half were hatched with mother present
  • half were hatched in an incubator with Lorenz present
  • the behaviour of all goslings were recorded
• A strength of Lorenz's work is that it was as scientific as possible and he attempted to control variables.
• A limitation is that his work raised ethical issues. Although there is evidence that imprinting can be reversed, arguably the geese who imprinted on Lorenz will never live normally and are unlikely to reproduce
• A limitation is that it is difficult to know what we can learn about humans from studies of geese. Extrapolation from animals is problematic in Psychology. Humans are much more complex than geese