Animal studies of attachment

Lorenz’s research - procedure

Lorenz conducted animal studies of the relationship between newborn animals and their mothers

• He set up a classic experiment where he randomly divided a large clutch of goose eggs. half of the eggs were hatched with the mother goose in their natural environment and the other half were hatched in an incubator where the first thing they saw was Lorenz

Lorenz’s research - findings

• The incubator group followed Lorenz everywhere whereas the control group followed the mother Goose everywhere – even after mixing them up

Imprinting and critical period

• Imprinting is when bird species that are mobile from birth attached to and follow the first moving object that they see

• The critical period is the time period In which imprinting must take place or it won’t take place at all. This could be the first few hours after hatching.

Evaluation of Lorenz’s research

• One strength is that there is support for the concept of imprinting – In the study of Regolin and Vallortigara (1995) , chicks were exposed to simple shape combinations that moved. when they were exposed to a range of combinations they followed the original most closely. This supports the view that young animals are born with an innate mechanism to imprint during the critical period.

• One limitation is that Lorenz studied non-human animals so it’s difficult to assume that humans act the same way – attachment formation in mammals is much more complex than that in birds. This means it is not appropriate to generalise Lorenz’s findings to humans

Harlow’s research - procedure

Harlow worked with rhesus monkeys to understand the concept of attachment

In this experiment he reared 16 baby monkeys with 2 wire model ‘mothers’(one was made of just plain wire, the other was covered in cloth and heated)

In one condition milk was dispensed by the plain wire mother. In the other condition it was dispensed by the cloth covered mother

Harlow’s research - findings

The baby monkeys spent most of their time with the cloth covered mother in preference to the plain wire mother, regardless of where the milk was being dispensed

They sought comfort from the cloth one when frightened

This showed that ‘contact comfort” was more of importance to the monkeys than food when it came to attachment behaviour

Mental deprivation

Monkeys deprived of a mother suffered severe permanent consequences

Monkeys with the plain wire mother were the most dysfunctional

Monkeys with the cloth covered mother did not develop normal social behaviour

These deprived monkeys were more aggressive and less sociable, they bred less but when they did, they neglected, attacked and sometimes even killed their own children

Evaluation

• one strength is that it provides insight into attachment formation - according to Howe(1998) , it has helped social workers and clinical psychologist understand that a lack of bonding experience may be a risk factor in child development. We also now understand the impossible of attachment figures in zoos

• One limitation is the ability to generalise findings from monkeys to humans - rhesus monkeys are much more similar to humans that Lorenz’s birds, however human behaviour is still much more complex that that of monkeys

• One limitation is ethical issues - his research caused severe and long term distress to the monkeys causing them to become dysfunctional and less sociable. This makes the study socially and ethically sensitive.