Animal Studies (Lorenz + Harlow)

• Harlow Monkey Study

  Method:

  • He separated newborn monkeys from their mothers and each monkey was presented with two surrogate mothers.
  • One surrogate monkey was made out of wire mesh and dispenses milk whereas the other one was made out of cloth but didn't dispense milk.

  Results: The monkeys cuddled with the soft object over the wire one regardless if it dispensed milk, suggests that comfort is more important in attachment than food. This contradicts the learning theory/cupboard love theory of attachment
• Maternally deprived monkeys as adults

  Harlow investigated the behaviour of infant monkeys separated from their mothers at birth to asses the effects of it on behaviour, these monkeys showed: highly disturbed + aggressive behaviour, inability to form relationships, lack of template (IWM) for healthy relationships.
• Evaluation of Harlow's Research

  + Important practical applications - helped social workers understand risk factors in child neglect + abuse, also can understand importance of attachment figures for baby monkeys in zoos. The usefulness of this increases its value

  X Can't generalise - baby monkeys are similar to human babies but not the same e.g humans develop speech-like communication. This may influence the formation of attachments. Anthropomorphism is the comparisons between humans + non-humans, and this is flawed
• Lorenz Geese Study

  Studies innate following behaviour in Geese, found that they would follow and attach themselves to the first moving object they see (imprinting)

  • randomly divided 12 goose eggs, half of them in their natural environment and other half in an incubator, where the first moving object they saw was Lorenz
  • Incubator group followed Lorenz, control group followed their mother

  Identified critical period in which imprinting needs to take place, if imprinting didn't occur, chicks can't attach themselves to a mother figure
• Evaluation of the work of Lorenz

  + Supports concept of imprinting - this study supports + suggests that young animals are born with an innate mechanism to imprint on a moving object and is present within the critical window of development. This supports Lorenz's conclusions and increases validity

  X Can't generalise to humans - mammalian attachment is different to that of birds, mammalian mothers show more emotional attachment. This means it's not appropriate to generalise Lorenz's ideas to humans
• Evaluation of animal studies of attachment

  + Behavioural continuity between species - Darwin's theory of evolution says all species are genetically related in some way, therefore makes sense to generalise findings, this is because there's behavioural continuity between humans and animals.

  + High degree of control - animal studies offer more control when compared to human studies, animals also have shorter breeding cycles so development can be studied across the lifespan.