Animal studies of Attachment

Lorenz's research:

Imprinting -

·       When they (bird species that are mobile from birth) attach to the first moving thing that they see.

Procedure -

·       Set up a classic experiment in which he randomly divided a clutch of goose eggs. 

·       Half of the eggs were hatched with the mother goose in their natural environment. The other half were hatched in an incubator where the first moving object that they saw was Lorenz.

Findings -

·       The incubator group followed Lorenz everywhere whereas the control group hatched in the presence of their mother, followed her.

·       When the groups were mixed, the control group continued to follow the mother and the experimental group followed Lorenz.

·       Lorenz identified a critical period in which imprinting needs to take place. Depending on the species that can be as brief as a few hours after hatching.

·       If imprinting doesn’t occur in this time, Lorenz found that chicks did not attach themselves to a mother figure.

Sexual Imprinting -

·       Lorenz also investigated the relationship between imprinting and adult mate preferences.

·       He observed that birds that imprinted on humans would often later display mating (courtship) behaviour towards humans.

Case study -

·       Lorenz…