Harlow’s Monkeys

Harry Harlow is a famous American psychologist who studied human development and behaviors through the behavior of monkeys. Much of his research has made an incredible impact in the world of child psychology, which is why I recently learned all about this experiment in my developmental psychology class.
In his most famous experiment, Harlow wanted to test the effect the mother has on an infant. To test this theory, infant monkeys were separated from their mothers relatively quickly after birth and were raised by surrogate mothers. These surrogates, however, were very different and provided different necessities to the animals. Both the surrogates were the same size however one was nothing but wire while the other was covered with terry cloth. Both mothers were warmed with an electric lamp.
In one experiment both mothers were placed in the cage with the monkeys, but only one mother was equipped with a nursing nipple. Some monkeys were fed from the wire mom and some the terry cloth mother. Even when the wire mother was the source of nourishment, the monkeys spent a great deal of time with the terry cloth mother regardless of who was giving them milk.
In another trial, the surrogate mother was designed to ‘reject’ the infant monkey. Rejection was demonstrated through strong jets of air or blunt spikes forcing baby away. The reactions of the babies were quite amazing actually, after rejection, the monkeys would cling again to the mothers even tighter than they did before.
These trials proved that nourishment is more than just feeding, and the bond between a mother and child is not solely because of feeding but because of the time spent with the child.
The monkeys used in these experiments eventually became mothers themselves and were observed to see the effect their ‘childhood’ had on them. All of the mothers tended to be either indifferent towards their babies, or abusive. The indifferent mothers did not nurse, comfort, or protect their babies however they did not harm them either. The abusive mothers would violently bite, or otherwise injure their infants. Many of the babies from the abusive mothers died in this process. This proved that how you were mothered has a major impact on how you will be as a mother.
Despite the major findings in these experiments, Harlow received many criticisms of his work because of ethical treatment of animals. He did however make an impact on the world around him by doing these experiments. For example, because Harlow proved the importance of touch and bonding, many orphanages and institutions increased the amount of time they spent with the babies and were held by the staff much more than they were before.
Harlow did other experiments with the monkeys so feel free to research him and his studies. Just as a warning, some of them are very hard to watch if you have a soft spot for animals.

How can you not??

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