Harry Harlow's Monkey Experiments

Harlow’s Monkey Experiments
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Harry Harlow’s work is an empirical account that has contributed much to the field of behavioral science. It has given valuable information regarding our understanding of relationships in the social structure. Harlow’s study gives insight to early development. The research gave important evidence of emotional attachment and safety in infant animals. It also gave a contrary belief to the behaviorist and psychoanalyst of those times who supported that babies became attached to mothers because the mothers provided them with much needed nutrition. Harlow’s study shows an importance to comfort and belongingness in young beings.
Harlow’s methodology involved the isolation of monkeys, and a deprivation to the presence of a mother. Through this experiment, the laboratory setting offered a feeling of despair for the young growing rhesus monkeys. Some animals were taken away from their cages and put into isolation with apparatus that were modeled to be maternal symbols. The monkeys that grew without social contact grew up to be low functioning, uncooperative, and unsociable when reintroduced to others. Many isolated monkeys refused to eat and died in the experiment.
Even without complete isolation, the infant monkeys raised without mothers developed social deficits, showing reclusive tendencies and clinging to their cloth diapers. Harlow was interested in the infants’ attachment to the cloth diapers, speculating that the soft material may simulate the comfort provided by a mother’s touch. Based on this observation, Harlow designed his now-famous surrogate mother experiment.One particular experiment design utilized two types of Maternal presence for the baby monkey. One was made by a wire model which...