Animal Studies

• Lorenz:

  • Divided a clutch of gosling eggs into 2 groups - mother or incubator.
  • The incubator chicks would see Lorenz first and follow him around.
  • Lorenz marked the two groups and placed them together again.
  • They quickly divided again to their original groups.
  • The control group followed their mother everywhere.
  • Second group followed Lorenz and showed no recognition for their mother.
  • Lorenz found that the strongest tendency to imprint was within 13-16 hours of hatching, by 32 hours they could no longer imprint.
• Harlow‘s research:

  • 16 baby rhesus monkeys separated and given a surrogate mother covered in cloth or just a plain wire.
  • One condition milk was dispensed by a plain wire and in the second condition the milk was dispensed by a cloth mother.
  • Observations made of what frightened the monkeys.
  • Both groups spent more time with the cloth mother.
  • The second group only went to the plain wire mother for food, and returned to the cloth mother once fed.
  • If the monkeys were frightened they would sit with the cloth mother for contact.
  • Some monkeys were emotionally damaged.
• STRENGTHS:

  • Harlows findings are useful as they show the concept of contact comfort, showing that attachment doesnt have to form as a result of feeding.
  • Theoretical value - human mother-infant attachment.
  • Harlows research has improved methods of ensuring that the risks of child neglect and abuse are known, which helps social workers understand and therefore has practical value.
• LIMITATIONS:

  • Generalisability - birds are very emotionally different to humans in terms of their attachment, this lowers the internal validity.
  • Conflicting research: Guiton et al says that changes in mating with chicks that have imprinted on objects can change and isn’t permanent, suggesting that Lorenz is wrong.
  • Ethical issues - the monkeys suffered greatly in Harlow’s research and their suffering was considered to be human like since they can be compared to humans. Harlow knew the issues with this but still carried out the research.
  • Generalisability - monkeys are so different to humans.