4.1.3b - Animal Studies of Attachment: Lorenz

Monday 15th January ‘24
Friday 19th January ‘24

Why are animals used to study attachment?

He was an Austrian zoologist and ethologist.
Forced to stop work and recruited to Nazi party as genetic psychologist and rsearched ‘racial hygiene’. He rejected his membership of the Nazi party as he suspected ‘selection’ implied murder.
Captured by Soviet Union and spent 4 years in a prisoner of war camp.
Lorenz was friends with philosopher Karl Popper (falsifiability - proving whats wrong).
Won a Nobel Prize 1973 for scientific work on animals and bird studies.
Studies on geese were natural observations - with only some scientific manipulation.

Sound is critical in early attachment.
Attaching to 1st moving object they see and hear.
Innate predispositional readiness to form a strong bond.
Gosling will imprint in 2 → 25 hours of hatching (known as the critical period - time in which imprinting occurs, if doesn’t happen then it is unlikely to at all)

Seperated goose eggs in two batches, one hatched naturally by the mother and the other in an incubator (independant variable). One group imprints on mother, another to Harlow.
Natural observation of behaviour.

Imprinting proved irreversible attachments.
Permanent critical period where imprinting occurs within first few hours after birth (approx 4-25 hours).
Sexual imprinting - later found that goslings imprinted onto humans would attempt to mate with humans as adult birds.

Guiton (1966) supported imprinting of animals to humand when his chicks imprinted onto his gloved hand.
- One of the chicks tried to mate with the glove.
Problems with generalisability, human attachment is different - we don’t imprint.
Animal studies useful in understanding imprinting.