Animal Studies

• Aim of Lorenz (1935)

  • Examine imprinting in non-human animals (where the offspring follows and forms an attachment bond to the first large moving object they see after birth)
• method of Lorenz (1935)

  • randomly divided greylag goose eggs into two; one control group who were hatched naturally by their mother and the other with Lorenz being the first large moving object
  • Lorenz then marked the goslings so he knew in which condition they were hatched and then placed them under an upside-down box
  • box was removed and their following behaviour of the mother goose and Lorenz was recorded again
• results of Lorenz (1935)

  • straight after birth the naturally-hatched goslings followed their mother goose whereas the incubator-hatched goslings followed Lorenz
  • when the box was taken away the naturally-hatched goslings moved immediately towards their mother while the incubator-hatched goslings followed Lorenz.
  • Lorenz noted that this imprinting only occurred within a critical period of 4-25 hours after hatching
  • relationship persisted over time and proved to be irreversible
• conclusion of Lorenz (1935)

  • results suggest that imprinting is a form of attachment that is exhibited by birds that typically leave the nest early, whereby they imprint onto the first large moving object they encounter after hatching
• Limitaitons of lorenz (1935)

  • Only studied non-human animals: can’t generalise the results to humans since we are unable to conclude that they would behave in exactly the same way. Attachment formation in mammals seems to be very different to bird species. Whilst some of the findings have greatly influenced ur understanding of development and attachment formation, caution must be applied when drawing wider conclusions about the results
• aim of Harlow (1959)

  • examine the extent to which contact comfort and food influences attachment behaviour in baby rhesus monkeys
• method of Harlow (1959)

  • two surrogate mothers; one harsh ‘wire mother’ and soft ‘towelling mother’
  • 16 baby rhesus monkeys used across four caged categories

  1. wire mother dispensing milk and towel mother with no milk
  2. wire mother with no milk and towel mother dispensing milk
  3. wire mother dispensing milk
  4. towel mother dispensing milk

  • amount of time spent with each mother was recorded alongside how long they spent feeding at each one
• results of harlow (1959)

  • when given a choice of surrogate mother the baby monkeys preferred to make contact with the soft ‘towelling mother’ irrespective of whether she dispensed milk.
  • observed they would even stretch across to the wire mother whilst still clinging onto the towelling mother for contact comfort
  • baby monkeys in the condition with only the wire mother showed signs of stress
  • greater exploration behaviour was seen by the baby monkeys with the towelling mother surrogate
• conclusions of harlow (1959)

  • concluded that baby rhesus monkeys appear to have an innate drive to seek cotact comfort form their parent suggesting that attachment is formed through an emotional need for security rather than food, which is in contrast to the learning theory explanation
  • contact comfort provided by the mother is associated by a higher willingness to explore their surroundings and lower levels of stress
• limitations of Harlow (1959) (1)

  • criticised heavily for ethics of his research: monkeys suffered greatly in terms of emotional separation from their biological mother at such an early age due to the procedure Harlow used. if species of primate are considered to be sufficiently human-like to generalise the results then the effects of psychological harm they will have to endure will be similar to the human baby also. However there is the question of whether the insight obtained justifies the approach
• limitations of harlow (1959) (2)

  • issues with generalisation becaushe whilst monkeys are more closely related to the human species they are still non-human therefore it is debated to what extent animal studies shoul be generalised to the human population due to their apparent differences
• strength of harlow

  • real-life application: helped social workers understand risk factors in neglect and abuse cases with human children which can then serve to prevent it occurring or, at the very least when to intervene.