Animal studies

• Animal studies-

  Lorenz’s research (1952) -

  Looked into imprinting by dividing goose eggs to have their mother as himself (hatched in an incubator) or their biological mother (hatched in their natural environment). Both groups grew up following their ‘mother’ and even when mixed up they still then followed their conditioned ‘mother’. Lorenz identified the critical period for where the babies will attach to the first moving thing, they see which was the mother goose or Lorenz, if they didn’t attach during this period they didn’t have a mother figure.
• Animal Studies-

  Lorenz’s research (1952)-

  Lorenz looked into sexual imprinting where he hatched a peacock in a zoo where it saw a giant tortoise first, as an adult it would only show courtship towards giant tortoises, meaning the peacock had undergone sexual imprinting.
• Animal Studies-

  Lorenz’s research (1952)-

  S- Regaling and Vallortigara (1995) studied imprinting with chicks being exposed to moving shapes once hatched, they followed the one they saw closely.

  S- Used in farming to help orphaned animals survive with the motherly help from another mother.

  W- Findings can’t be generalised to humans due to the genetic differences between birds and humans.
• Animal Studies-

  Hallow’s research (1985) –

  • Harlow used monkeys to look into the idea of importance of comfort.
  • Babies that were left alone often died, so he set up 16 baby monkeys with 2 wires ‘mothers’ that dispensed milk, one covered in cloth.
  • He found that the monkeys would cuddle the cloth ‘mother’ for comfort and not the wire mother regardless of the circumstances or food given showing that comfort was more important than food.
• Animal Studies-

  Harlow’s research (1985)-

  • They were overall more aggressive, less sociable, less and unskilled mating, depriving their own young and attacking/killing their young.
  • He also found the critical period that the mother had to be introduced within 90 days for an attachment to form, afterwards the affects were irreversible since no attachment could be made between the baby and mother monkey.

   
• Animal Studies-

  Harlow’s research (1985)-

  • He also looked to see if early maternal deprivation would have effects in adulthood, finding that they were dysfunctional from the plain wire ‘mothers’, while the cloth ‘mothers’ made them abnormal in social situations. They were overall more aggressive, less sociable, less and unskilled mating, depriving their own young and attacking/killing their young.
• Animal Studies-

  Harlow’s research (1985)-

  S- Real-world application by helping social workers and clinical psychologists understand the impacts of a lack of bonding, able to prevent damage – Howe (1998).

  W- Not generalisable due to the difference in species due to their brains being different from humans, making human’s behaviour more complex, even though we’re closely related.

  W- Ethics since his experiment has caused long term damage to the monkeys.