Animal studies

• What did Lorenz (1952) research?

  Imprinting
• Lorenz 1952 procedure

  Lorenz randomly divided a large clutch of goose eggs:

  • one hand were hatched with the mother goose in their natural environment
  • the other half hatched in an incubator where the first moving object they saw Lorenz

  then they mixed all goslings together to see whom they would follow

  (Lorenz also observed birds and their later courtship behaviours)
• Lorenz 1952 findings

  • the incubator group followed Lorenz
  • the control group followed the mother
  • Lorenz identified a critical period in which imprinting needs to take place e.g. a few hours after hatching
  • if imprinting didnt occur within the critical period, the chicks didnt attach themselves to the mother figure
• Lorenz 1952 conclusion

  • critical period where imprinting needs to occur
  • sexual imprinting also occurs whereby the birds acquire a template of desirable characteristics required in a mate
• what did Harlow (1958) study?

  importance of contact confort
• procedure of Harlow (1958)


  harlow reared 16 rhesus monkeys with two wire model mothers

  • condition 1 - milk was dispensed by the plain wire mother
  • condition 2 - milk was dispensed by the cloth covered mother

  the monkeys preferences were measured

  • to measure attachment like behaviour, Harlow observed how the monkeys reacted when placed in frightening situations e.g. adding a noisy mechanical teddy bear
  • harlow and his colleagues also continued to study the monkeys who had been deprived of their ‘real’ mother in adulthood
• findings of Harlow 1958

  • baby monkeys cuddled the cloth covered mother in preference tp the plain wire mother regardless of which dispensed milk.
  • this suggests that contact comfort was more important than food when it came to attachment behaviour
  • the monkeys sought comfort from the cloth covered mother when frightened
• conclusion of Harlow 1958

  as adults, the monkeys who had been deprived of their real mothers suffered severe consequences - they were more aggressive, less sociable and less skilled in mating with other monkeys
• one strength of Lorenz is support for the concept of imprinting 


  Regolin and Vallortigara (1995) exposed chicks to simple shape combinations that moved. when shown a range of moving shapes the chicks followed these in preference to other shapes. this suggests that young animals are born with an innate mechanism to imprint on a moving object
• one limitation of Lorenz is generalising from birds to humans


  the mammalian attachment system is quite different from imprinting in birds. for example, mammalian mothers show more emotional attachment to their young. this means that it may not be appropriate to generalise lorenz’s ideas about imprinting to humans
• one strength of Harlows research is that it has real world value


  it has helped social workers understand the risk factors in child abuse and thus intervene to prevent it (Howe 1998). we also now understand the importance of attachment figures for baby monkeys in zoos and breeding programmes. this means that Harlow research has benefitted both animals and humans
• one limitation of Harlows research is generalising from monkeys to humans


  monkeys are clearly more similar to humans than lorenz geese and all mammals share some similarities in their attachment systems. however, they are not human and in some ways the human mind and behaviour are much more complex. this means that it may not be appropriate to generalise Harlow findings to humans