2023-2025 Year 12 A-Level Psychology Animal Studies: Lorenz and Harlow TW

Imprinting

The cloth mother, suggesting that contact comfort is more important than food when forming an attachment.

12-17 hours after hatching

16 baby rhesus monkeys that were separated from their mothers at birth.

By varying the time between birth and seeing a moving object so he could measure the critical period of imprinting

Field experiment

FALSE

To investigate whether food or comfort is more important in forming attachments

Random allocation

To avoid bias

Sociability and relationships with future relationships. Monkeys had difficulty forming relationships, struggled to mate and were often bullied. If they did become mothers themselves, they struggled to form attachments with their offspring and some even killed them.

Contact comfort is the most important factor when forming an attachment

One was made of cloth which provided NO food
The other was made of wire which DID provide food

Because he recorded his OWN observations, so may have chosen to include findings that support his theory. This may decrease the internal validity of the research as it may not truly be measuring the effects of imprinting on attachment.

Wire mother

Lorenz

Their natural mother (goose)

1. 1. Goslings imprint on first thing they see

2. 2. There is a specific time period of 12-17 hours for attachment to take place with goslings, otherwise they will not attach at all.

Controlled / lab setting

Natural environment / field experiment

Animal bias - human attachment behaviour may be more complex than animal attachment behaviour as human emotions are more sophisticated towards their offspring than animals.

They used samples of ONLY animals - geese / rhesus monkeys

We may not be able to extrapolate / generalise findings to humans

Practical applications - the principles of the research findings that contact comfort is more important in the formation of attachment has been used in the real world to emphasise that child rearing needs go beyond caring for their physical needs.

False - Lorenz measured imprinting

As there may be researcher bias as Lorenz recorded his own observations. This means he may have left out details of goslings that did not imprint on him, for example.

1. 1. Controlled environment - may not be generalisable to real life

2. 2. Animal bias - may not be generalisable to humans as human attachment more complex

Cloth mother

Animal bias - human attachment behaviour may be more complex than animal attachment behaviour therefore may not be generalisable to human infants.

DV = imprinting behaviours in geese

IV = whether the geese hatched and saw their mother first, or Lorenz

He measured how long the monkeys spent with each mother. He also looked at which monkey the mother returned to when frightened.

Bias - lowers the internal validity because he may have not included data that didn't fit his hypothesis. For example, if a gosling that hatched with him didn't imprint on him.

The rhesus monkeys were scared with loud noises, bullied by other monkeys, and found difficulties mating and raising their own offspring

As it was a field experiment, taking place in a natural environment. The only thing Lorenz manipulated what the IV (who the goslings first saw when they hatched).

Goslings who imprinted on humans would, as adult birds, attempt to mate with humans.

Animal studies are useful when looking at topics that might be unethical or impractical to carry out on humans.