Describe the attachment study carried out by Lorenz

To test his theory of imprinting in attachment, Lorenz used unhatched goslings to find out whether they will attach to the first moving object they see. He divided a sample of goslings in 2 and let one half hatch with their mother but the other half in an incubator where Lorenz himself was the first object they saw upon hatching. He found later on that after mixing the two halves of gosling groups, the one hatched in an incubator continued to follow him if he walked away, and ignore their mother. From this he concluded that attachment behaviour such as following the "mother" around was an innate instinct termed 'imprinting' found in animals, which involves simply attaching yourself to the first moving object, which usually does happen to be the mother. Furthermore, those goslings who failed to attach to any object displayed a lack of mating ability and general social skills among other geese.