Analyzing Harlow's Rhesus Monkeys

“So far as love or affection is concerned, psychologists have failed in their mission. The little we know about love does not transcend simple observation, and the little we write about it has been written better by poets and novelists.”(Harlow Harry) Harry Harlow was an American Psychologist, born on October 31, 1905 in Fairfield, Connecticut and died on December 6, 1981 in Tucson, Arizona. Throughout his life time he studied the behaviorism of a human being, by closely examining monkeys. He received his PhD from Stanford University after that he united with the psychology department at the University of Wisconsin. While working at the University as a professor he expanded his research in the experimentation of a child’s nurture needs. His

Harlow believed the opposite, he believed that a child needed a mothers warmth and love rather than for her food resources in order to grow affection. He researched beyond the poor explanation that everyone used to describe the bond between a mother and a child. For the experiment Harlow used a newborn rhesus monkey and two simulated mother figures. One was made out of cloth with no food source and the other was made out of wire and this one did hold food out for the monkey. During the first few hours of the experiment the monkey went with the cloth mother rather than the wire one, “These data make it obvious that contact comfort is a variable of overwhelming importance in the development of affectional response, whereas lactation is a variable of negligible importance." (Harlow, 1958) However, there was many more experiments that lead after the cloth/wire one. The same surrogate mothers were used, just during different activities. The closest examination was that when the monkey felt alone or scared they always looked for the cloth mother figure and their

Which impacts even today’s society by giving necessary parenting tips and allowing parents to trust a licensed care giver to take care of their child. By providing security that their child will have the protection when needed. However, there may be some lack of that warmth and motherly touch since there is just one care giver for a large amount of children. Therefore it was a good change to just a certain extent. The result of this data forever changed the way a child was nurtured. This experiment demonstrated that love and nurture is the fundament of a child’s growth and without it there can be close to permanent psychological damage made to the child and it can even carry on to adulthood. The child will always need the protection of a mother as shown in the experiment. For example a premature baby needs to be exposed to lots of contact with the mother in order to survive. The same applies to a healthy baby in order to grow affection it needs skin to skin contact to his or her