Harry Harlow
By Shafiqa and Hiruni
HARLOW’S EXPERIMENTS
• He developed his theory on human infants in the 1950’s and
60’s
• An American psychologist named Harry Harlow was
conducting research on attachment in rhesus monkey.
• Harlow conducted 2 other experiments.
• He used a surrogate mother and an actual birth mother.
• He isolated the monkeys for 3 months after then giving them
a mother.
• After 12 months their behaviour still stayed the same.
• He used a mother made out of cloths.
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Aim-to find out whether provision of food or contact comfort is more important in the
infant mother attachment.
Participants-eight newborn rhesus monkeys separated from their mothers immediately
after birth.
Procedure: group1-four monkeys isolated in cages where a cloth surrogate mother
provided food and a wire surrogate mother did not.
Group 2-four monkeys isolated in cage where a wire surrogate mother provided food
and a cloth surrogate mother did not.
Independent variable-provision of food by either a cloth or wire surrogate mother.
Dependent variable-amount of contact time spent with cloth and wire surrogate
mother.
Results-all monkeys in both group 1 and 2 spent far more time with their cloth
surrogate than they did with their wire surrogate, regardless of which provided food.
Conclusion-contact comfort is more important than feeding in the formation of infant
mother attachment in rhesus monkeys.
Generalisation-contact comfort is likely to be a crucial factor in human infant parent
attachment.
Other experiments
• The wire mother experiment
• Fear security, and attachment
Why did Harlow use the rhesus
monkeys ?
• Harlow says that he used these types of monkeys loved
experiments and had an powerful implications for any and all
separations of mothers and infants, including adoption, as
well as childbearing in general.
Results
• 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 rhesus
monkey’s attachment to its mother.
• Contact comfort was also likely to be a crucial factor in human
infant- parent attachment.
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