Psychology: Animal Studies (Attachment)

Lorenz

Harlow

When animals attatch to the first moving object or living animal they see directly after birth

He randomly divided two groups of goose eggs:
Half hatched with th emother goose in a natural environment
Half hatched in an incubator where the first moving thing they saw was Lorenz

The group hatched in the incubator followed Lorenz, and the group hatched with the mother goose followed her

They would separate to follow who they had imprinted on- the mother goose or Lorenz

An animal will display sexual behaviours towards the moving object or living animal they imprinted on at birth

A peacock born and raised surrounded by turtles desired to mate with the turtles later in life

16 baby Rhesus monkeys

Each in individual cages with one cloth mother and one wire mother

Cloth mother- comfort
Wire mother- milk

They would run to the cloth mother

The cloth mother

That contact comfort is more important than food in attatchment

Were less socialble and more aggressive than other Rhesus monkeys
Bread less and inskilled at mating
Some neglected or attacked their young

90 days

The mammalian attatchment system is different to the one in birds- mammalian mothers show more emotional attatchment to their young than birds to
Mammals can potentially fomr attatchments at any time in their lives with greater emotinal intensity
Lorenz's ideas about imprinting are not generalisable to humans.
There is low ecological validity as findings cannot be generalised beyond the research setting that they were found in