Ok, so this is definitely not a human thing, so probably a bit of a tangent. One of the topics that came up in a neuroscience class once was goose imprinting. There’s apparently been studies (see Eckhard Hess for the early ones) that show that the strength of the imprinting (measured by behavior following the close of the critical period) onto whatever target is related to how much running towards the target the baby geese do. The hand-wavey explanation was something like ‘probably this makes sense since if you have to run a lot to keep up with your mother-goose for safety, you’ll need a strong mother-goose-following behavioral tendency to keep you safe through early development’.
Ok, so this is definitely not a human thing, so probably a bit of a tangent. One of the topics that came up in a neuroscience class once was goose imprinting. There’s apparently been studies (see Eckhard Hess for the early ones) that show that the strength of the imprinting (measured by behavior following the close of the critical period) onto whatever target is related to how much running towards the target the baby geese do. The hand-wavey explanation was something like ‘probably this makes sense since if you have to run a lot to keep up with your mother-goose for safety, you’ll need a strong mother-goose-following behavioral tendency to keep you safe through early development’.
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/12/imprinting