Animal Studies of Attachment

Lorenz and imprinting…

Certain animals, such as many species of birds, are known to attach to their mother strongly, the infant animal will then follow their mother. Lorenz termed this process imprinting and tested this early bond

Lorenz (1935) Procedure:

Greylag goose eggs were randomly divided, half were taken to be hatched by Lorenz using an incubator, and the other half were hatched naturally by the biological mother. In later studies, he varied the time between hatching and when the gosling first observed a moving object

Lorenz (1935) Findings:

The goslings who Lorenz had hatched imprinted on him, following him rather than the mother goose. The goslings hatched in a natural environment, imprinted on the mother and followed her. Lorenz placed all of the goslings in a box. When the goslings were released from the box, the goslings who had imprinted on Lorenz found him and continued to follow him

Lorenz and the critical period…

Lorenz found the goslings had a critical period of around 32 hours, if a gosling did not see a large moving object to imprint on in these first few hours, it lost the ability to imprint

What does Lorenz (1935) research suggest?

Lorenz’s research suggests imprinting is a strong evolutionary/biological feature of attachment in certain birds, and imprinting is with the first large object visually seen, not other potential cues (ie smell/sound)

Harlow and contact comfort…

A test of ‘cupboard love’ theory, that babies love mothers because they feed them

Harlow (1958) Procedure:

Infant Rhesus Macaque monkeys were removed from their biological mothers and placed in cages with surrogate mothers. One surrogate mother provided milk but not comfort, as its body was constructed of exposed wire, the other surrogate. Mother provided comfort as the wire was covered with a cloth, the cloth mother did not provide food. Time spent with the mother was recorded, as well as which surrogate the infant ran to when frightened by a mechanical monkey

Harlow (1958) Findings:

• The infant monkeys spent most of their time with the comfort providing ‘cloth mother’, only visiting the ‘food mother’ when they needed to eat but quickly returning to the cloth mother for comfort

• The infant monkeys returned to the cloth mother when frightened. And monkeys without access to a cloth mother showed signs of stress related illness

• In follow up studies, Harlow found that the maternal deprivation in his studies had caused resulted in permanent social disorders in the monkeys as adults, including difficulty in mating behaviour and raising their offspring

What does Harlow’s research suggest?

Harlow’s research suggests that Rhesus Macaques have a biological (nature) need for physical contact and will attach to whatever provides comfort rather than food, providing evidence against the cupboard love theory

AO3 - Generalising animal behaviour to human psychology is problematic

Humans and animals have very different biology, and humans have various social and cultural experiences that inform their behaviour. Even Harlow’s findings on primates, who are closer genetically to humans than Lorenz’s birds, should not automatically be thought to apply to humans

AO3 - Harlow’s findings as useful

Harlow’s findings on contact comfort have been highly influential, Bowlby argued similar to Macaques, infants crave comfort from their mothers, attempting to form a monotropic relationship. If this fails, then Bowlby claims that human infants will grow into adults with poor socialisation, similar to the monkeys without a cloth mother

AO3 - Lorenz’s findings as useful

Lorenz’s findings on the critical period in geese have been highly influential, Bowlby argued that there is a similar critical period for humans, 6 to 30 months. And if attachment does not form in that time, it will result in permanent social problems. However, showing the difficulty of applying animal research to humans, later research on orphans suggests unlike with geese, this period is ‘sensitive’ not critical, important, but later care can help with recovery

AO3 - Practical applications of animal studies

Knowledge gained from animal studies and later developments by Bowlby have been applied to early childcare. Eg after birth, immediate physical contact between the mother and their babies is now encouraged, and social service workers actively investigate cases of infant neglect, understanding its long term harm

AO3 - Harlow criticised on ethical grounds…

…for the harm caused to many intentionally orphaned primate infants and for causing high stress levels. This suffering was real and public knowledge of these studies has harmed psychology’s reputation. However, some psychologists argue that the long term benefits to millions of human infants resulting from Harlow’s research justify the studies when considering a cost benefit analysis

(This doesn’t mean the studies aren’t valid, some topics can only be studied in unethical ways)