Emotional Development Flashcards
Harlow Studies
Harry Harlow was researching attachment in rhesus monkeys. Harlow conducted many experiments to investigate factors influencing the development of attachment by infant monkeys to their mothers. Harlow proposed that if an infant’s attachment to its mother was based primarily on feeding, then it would’ve preferred whichever surrogate had the bottle (cloth/wire). Harlow found that regardless of which surrogate provided the bottle, the infant monkey spent more time with the cloth surrogate than the wire. Harlow concluded that “contact comfort”, which was provided by the soft cloth, was more important than feeding in the formation of an infant rhesus monkey’s attachment to its mother. His findings suggested that contact comfort was also likely to be a crucial factor in human infant-parent relationships.
