animal studies of attachment

• Animal studies


  Research on the formation of early bonds between animal parents and their offspring
• Animal studies can help us understand attachment in humans
• Harlow's research: Monkey experiment

  1. Aim: To conduct research on newborn monkeys who were separated from their mother after birth

  2. Procedure: 2 types of surrogate mothers used (wire and cloth), 16 baby rhesus monkeys used, amount of time spent with each mother recorded, monkeys tested with loud noises

  3. Conditions: 1) Wire mother producing milk, cloth mother producing no milk; 2) Wire mother producing no milk, cloth mother producing milk; 3) Wire mother producing milk; 4) Cloth mother producing milk

  4. Findings: Monkeys preferred contact with cloth mother, monkeys with wire mother suffered stress, monkeys clung to cloth mother when frightened

  5. Conclusion: Rhesus monkeys have innate need for contact comfort, attachment concerns emotional security more than food
• Strengths of Harlow's study

  • High control over extraneous variables in controlled lab setting, practical applications of research
• Weaknesses of Harlow's study

  • Artificial and controlled setting not reflective of real life, ethical issues of causing psychological harm to monkeys, lack of generalisability to humans
• Lorenz's research: Gosling experiment

  1. Aim: To observe the formation of attachment in goslings

  2. Procedure: Split clutch of eggs, some hatched naturally with mother, others hatched in incubator with Lorenz as first moving object, behaviour recorded

  3. Findings: Incubator goslings only followed Lorenz, bonds proved irreversible, imprinting occurred within 4-25 hours of birth

  4. Conclusion: Animals imprint mental image of first moving object, attachment is instinctive
• Strengths of Lorenz's study


  • Findings highly influential, evidence from other studies supports view
• Weaknesses of Lorenz's study


  • Difficult to generalise findings from animals to humans
• Human behaviour is governed by conscious decisions, unlike animals