Animal studies of attachment

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Imprinting-an innate readiness to form an attachment soon after birth/hatching

Lorenz (1935) wanted to find out how attachment is formed and whether imprinting occurs; he studied a clutch of gosling eggs by dividing them into 2 groups-1 group stayed with the birth mother and the other was put into an incubator. Lorenz found that the incubator hatchlings saw him first and began to follow him around as he was the 'mother figure' that they had imprinted on-he also found that his goslings showned no recognition to their birth mother.           To conclude, imprinting had occured as Lorenz thought it would-this is because it is innate and restricted to a critical period in which a moving object is necessary for imprinting to occur (this is similar to attachment as it binds the animal to its caregiver). He later found that the effects were actually irreversible and long lasting-it had the same effect on their sexual preferences. 

An evaluation of this is that the study was tested on animals therefore the results cannot be generalised to humans due to the fact that we may have produced entirelly different results to different animals. This also raises questions about ethical issues as the animals cannot give their consent to take part in the study and separating the babies from their mother may cause major psychological damage for the animals. However,

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