I would like to know more about the Harlow Monkey experiment (summary) and what it proves.

-- Silvia Kissova (www.cutiepie898@hotmail.com), March 22, 2001

Answers

See Harlow's 1958 APA Presidential Address, on-line at: http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Harlow/love.htm. As I recall, the claim was that (contrary to, say, Maslow's hierarchy of needs), food does not always trump "love" (read "contact comfort"). When forced to choose, baby monkeys spent most of their time with the cuddly surrogate mother, rather than with the milk surrogate. There were lots of variations and spinoff longitudinal results as well.

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), March 22, 2001.

Hi Silvia, I think the monkeys raised without their mothers never developed "normally" and they exhibited, for lack of a better word, neurotic behavior. No social life to speak of followed. Of the ways you could interpret this, the one that grabs most is the importance of early nurturing and the bonding between caregiver and infant from the beginning for normal development and fit into social sturcture. A good comparative psychology book should cover these studies in depth and correct any mistakes I give you here. Best, David

-- david clark (doclark@yorku.ca), March 22, 2001.

Another aspect of its importance is that it an empirical critique of some of the core assumptions of Freud's metapsychology--namely that reduction of drives (hunger) is more important or fundamental than what is now being called attachment behaviors. Morris Eagle does a wonderful job of discussing this aspect of Harlow in Recent Development in Psychoanalysis.

-- John Christopher (jcc@montana.edu), March 26, 2001.

According to Donna Haraway in her 'Primate Visions' (1989), the Harlow experiments prove that animal research reifies normative assumptions about human society. The Harlow experiments assumed and reproduced social norms with respect to human gender differences, the ideal family etc.

-- Geoff Bunn (g.bunn@nmsi.ac.uk), April 24, 2001.

Hey silvia

Harry Harlow conducted a number of experiments investigating the factors influencing the development of emotional bonds. The experiment you are talking about was done in 1958. He used eight infant rheses monkeys which had been separated from their mothers at birth. These monkeys were individually placed in cages with two surrogate mothers. They were both indentical in size and made out of wire mesh, except one had terry towelling cloth over it. Harlow discovered that regardless of which surrogate mother provided the food the cloth surrogate was preferred.

Therefore he is proving that contact comfort is likely to be a crucial factor in infant-parent attachment

-- Kylie Dovaston (dovaston@alphalink.com), April 27, 2001.

Hi Silvia: Harlow monkeys experiments give us a key to undertand the path of the emotional balance, a how the deprivation of social interacction is so important to develope a normal personality. If you hadn!t read about Victor of Aveyron, I recomend the book of Alberto Merani titled : The Human Nature. In this book Dr.Merani describes the story of Victor and the origninal quotations of Dr. Jean Marc Itar. Do you agree that the evoultion of the human conscious depends on social influence of the parents and relatives?

-- Anel González (anelpsi@hotmail.com), June 13, 2001.