DP3 - Emotional development - Harry Harlow and his Monkeys

Question 1

What was the experiment?

Answer 1

During the 50’s and 60’s, Harry Harlow conducted a number of experiments on attachment between monkeys and their babies, including what influenced that attachment

Question 2

What happened in the experiment?

Answer 2

Monkeys were taken from their mothers at birth and given what is known as a ‘surrogate’ mother (playing the part of the mother)
They were made of mesh wire and were roughly the same size and shape as the mother.

Question 3

What happened in the experiment? cont.

Answer 3

4 monkeys were given a surrogate covered in cloth with food and 4 were given a surrogate with no cloth and food. They were all in separate cages to control them from comforting each other
A mechanical teddy was introduced to the monkeys after an attachment was formed with the surrogates.

Question 4

Findings

Answer 4

It was found that, when the monkeys were scared, they went to the cloth surrogate, not unclothed one, showing the comfort was more important to the monkeys than nourishment. This also occurred over the time spent attaching to the surrogates, where the monkeys spent far more time with the cloth surrogates than the wire ones with just food.

Question 5

Findings cont

Answer 5

Harlow concluded that ‘contact comfort’, which was provided by the softness of the cloth covering, was more important than feeding in the formation of an infant’s attachment to its mother. He generalised his findings to suggest that contact comfort was also most likely to be a crucial factor in human infant–caregiver attachment.