Monkey Study

While listening to This American Life which is a very interesting radio program which you can listen to online, I came across a very interesting subject. It was about an experiment on monkeys which could prove that love from parents was important to an infant’s growth. Could you even believe that they ever doubted this fact? There was indeed a time when the psychological establishment, pediatricians and the government believed that loving your own child was dangerous. The reason for this was that at the time they didn’t know how bacteria spread and observed that children who were picked up/carried by someone often acquired more infections. Another reason was that scientist could not measure love and therefore did not believe it existed. Psychologists also argued that a child who was given less affection would become a better human being.

The public also believed this theory, until Harry Harlow came along and decided to prove them wrong. Between 1953 and 1958, Dr. Harlow conducted an experiment where he took a baby monkey away from its birth mother replacing it with 2 fake mother monkeys one made out of soft cloth and the other made from wires. A bottle was fitted into the wire monkey to feed the baby. However the young monkeys preferred to cling to the cloth mothers especially when they were scared and would only stay with the wire models long enough to get their food. When the babies were around the cloth mother it would explore more and was more confident. This proved that they needed more than just food from their mothers; they required contact and comfort in order to develop important characteristics.

Harlow convinced people that what bonds a parent and a child is more than the need for food and that a parent’s love for a child was essential for the child’s key development.

Sources:
http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1204
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/bhharl.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_F._Harlow