PSYCHOLOGY OF EMOTIONS

Detailed explanation-1: -Famously described by zoologist Konrad Lorenz in the 1930s, imprinting occurs when an animal forms an attachment to the first thing it sees upon hatching. Lorenz discovered that newly hatched goslings would follow the first moving object they saw-often Lorenz himself.

Detailed explanation-2: -According to Lorenz the two most important characteristics of imprinting are irreversibility (the property that after imprinted by a specific object, the organism would always prefer the object to other stimuli) and the existence of critical period.

Detailed explanation-3: -The primary function of imprinting, however, is to enable the young animal to recognize its own mother from among the other adults of its species. This no doubt is particularly important in the case of such animals as sheep, which live in large flocks.

Detailed explanation-4: -Lorenz is recognized as one of the founding fathers of the field of ethology, the study of animal behavior. He is best known for his research of the principle of attachment, or imprinting, through which in some species a bond is formed between a newborn animal and its caregiver.

Detailed explanation-5: -imprinting, in psychobiology, a form of learning in which a very young animal fixes its attention on the first object with which it has visual, auditory, or tactile experience and thereafter follows that object.