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Much of Harlow's scientific career was spent studying maternal bonding, what he described as the "nature of love".These experiments involved rearing newborn "total isolates" and monkeys with surrogate mothers, ranging from toweling-covered cones to a machine that modeled abusive mothers by assaulting the baby monkeys with cold air or spikes.
Monkey clinging to the cloth mother surrogate in fear test. Harry Frederick Harlow (October 31, 1905 – December 6, 1981) was an American psychologist best known for his maternal-separation, dependency needs, and social isolation experiments on rhesus monkeys, which manifested the importance of caregiving and companionship to social and cognitive development.
Subsequent experiments would study the effects of total and partial isolation on the animals' mental health and interpersonal bonding using a stainless steel vertical chamber designed by Harlow, named the "pit of despair", which was found to produce "profound and prolonged depression" in monkeys. Similarly, Harlow found that extended isolation ...
Harlow, being fascinated with the concept of love and nurturing, worked with monkeys to test these theories. (Berger, 2005) In Harlow's monkey experiment, newborn monkeys were separated from their mothers almost immediately after birth. They were then raised with substitute "mothers" made of either (1) wire or (2) wood covered with a soft cloth.
A classic study demonstrating attachment in animals was done by Harry Harlow with his macaque monkeys. His study suggests that an infant not only feels attachment to their mother because of needs for nutrients and protection, but they feel attachment to their mother for needs of comfort as well.
The formal origin of attachment theory can be traced to the publication of two 1958 papers, one being Bowlby's The Nature of the Child's Tie to his Mother, in which the precursory concepts of "attachment" were introduced, and Harry Harlow's The Nature of Love, based on the results of experiments which showed, approximately, that infant rhesus ...
These experiments showed how young monkeys need physical contact with other monkeys to learn the social behaviors and interact with each other effectively. One way physical developmental homeostasis was tested was in the facial symmetry experiment where people were asked to rate which of the faces they saw as better looking.
The baby monkey would choose to snuggle up to the cloth mother and felt secure. If the experiment was performed again without the cloth mother then the baby monkey would freeze up, scream, and cry. This study shows a secure attachment to something that is soft and comforting. Babies can feel the same way with blankets or stuffed animals. [14]