Discuss animal studies of attachment

• Lorenz study - imprinting

  • Batch of goose eggs, split in half, 1 hatched with mum, 1 hatched with Lorenzo in incubator
  • incubator group followed Lorenzo everywhere
  • control group followed mother goose.
  • Even when groups were mixed they followed the one they’d made imprint on.
  • Bird species are mobile from birth and attach to first moving object they see.
  • identified a critical period imprinting needed to happen in
  • depending on species it can be as little as a few hours, for geese it’s about 3-20 hours
  • if it doesn’t occur within the critical period, chicks can’t attach to mother figure.
• sexual imprinting


  Lorenz found that a peacock who had been imprinted onto a tortoise, only showed sexual behaviour towards tortoises
• Harlow- importance of contact comfort

  • observed new born rhesus monkeys
  • he put 16 baby monkeys in cages with 2 wire model mothers
  • 1 only had a bottle and was just wire
  • the other was just covered in cloth
  • monkeys preferred the cloth covered monkey over food monkey, and sought comfort from it when frightened
  • shows contact comfort is more important than food for attachment
  • critical period for attachment- 90 days
• what did Harlow find about wire mothers compared to real mothers

  he found that those who had been brought up with the wire monkey had severe effects, they were more aggressive and less sociable
• A03

  Strength - generalisability to humans


  • humans have complex behaviours and lots of emotional connection/interactions that characterise human attachment.
  • Although Harlow's monkeys are more similar to humans than Lorenzo‘s birds
  • the human brain and behaviour is still more complex, so it may not be appropriate to generalise the findings to humans
• A03

  Limitation - ethical issues


  • Harlow damaged the monkeys behaviour in his research.
  • he made them distressed in a cage.
  • this discredits the research as it was unethical to the animals, making it less credible
• A03

  Strength - theoretical value

  • Harlows research has been helpful in understanding mother infant attachment.
  • we can see that contact comfort from mother to babies more important than food.
  • showed the effects of early levels attachment on later adult relationships