Harlow's Monkeys

 

Harlow's Monkeys

The aims

Harlow created the experiment to find out if motherly love and comfort were more important for forming attachments than food. 

The procedure

Harlow used 8 Rhesus monkeys and provided each monkey with 2 wire mothers. One had a feeding bottle attached and the other was covered with cloth for contact comfort. Each monkey was studied for 165 days and the amount of time with each mother was monitored. 

The findings 

It was found that the infant monkeys spent most of their time with the cloth mother, typically 22 hours with the cloth mother. They would only go to the mother with the feeding bottle to eat and would then go back to the cloth mother. When the monkey's were frightened, they clung to the cloth mother and used it for reassurance whenever they were playing (with one foot on the base). The contact comfort was insufficient for healthy emotional development as they later had problems with reproductive relationships. They would freeze or flee if approached by other monkeys.

Conclusion

Harlow's monkeys shows how motherly love and comfort were more important to an extent in forming attachments than food. They would spend more time with the cloth mother than with the feeding mother, as they would only go to the feeding mother when they were hungry. However, due to the isolation of the monkeys, they would later be unable to form good reproductive relationships and it shows that the interaction of the monkeys is important for the development. But if the monkeys were reintroduced to their peers before they were 3 months old, they did seem to recover.