Animal studies of attachment

• What is imprinting?

  • certain animals are known to attach to their mother strongly
  • the infant will follow the mother
  • lorenz tested imprinting on goslings
• Outline Lorenz research

  • gosling eggs were randomly divided
  • he took half of them to be hatched by himself using an incubator and the other half were hatched naturally by the biological mother
• What results did Lorenz find?

  • the goslings he hatched imprinted on him, following him rather than the mother
  • when he placed all the goslings in a box the gosling that imprinted on him continued to follow him after being released
• What did Lorenz find about the critical period of ducks?

  • they had a critical period of around 32 hours
  • if a gosling did not see a large moving object to imprint on during this time, it would lose its ability to imprint
• What theory did Harlow test?

  • the cupboard love theory
• Outline Harlow's research

  • Rhesus monkeys were removed from their biological mothers and placed in cages with surrogate mothers
  • one mother provided milk and no comfort (constructed of wires)
  • the other mother had a cloth over the wires but provided no food
  • the time spent with each mother was recorded as well as which surrogate mother the infant ran to when frightened by a mechanical monkey
• What were Harlow's findings?

  • infant monkeys spent most of their time with the cloth mother, only visiting the food mother when they needed to eat
  • infant monkeys ran to cloth mother when frightened
  • monkeys without a cloth mother showed sign of stress related illness
• What did Harlow's findings show in terms of maternal deprivation?

  • the monkeys were maternally deprived
  • this resulted in permanent social disorders in the monkeys as adults such as difficulty in mating behaviour and raising their offspring
• Did Harlow's research reject the cupboard love theory?


  yes
• What does Harlow's research show?

  • rhesus monkeys have a biological need for physical contact and will attach to whatever provides them comfort rather than food
  • this is evidence against the cupboard love theory