Harlow's research

• Procedure – Reared 16 baby monkeys with two wire model ‘mothers’. In one condition milk was dispensed by the plain wire mother whereas in the second condition milk was dispensed by the cloth covered mother.
• Findings – Found that the baby monkeys cuddled the soft object in preference to the wire one and also sought comfort from the cloth one when frightened regardless of which dispensed milk. This showed that ‘contact comfort’ was more important to the monkeys than food when it came to attachment behaviour.
• Critical period for normal development – like Lorenz, Harlow said there was a critical period of 90 days in which a monkey must attach to a mother figure. After this period attachment it is not possible and irreversible damage through early deprivation was done.
• Maternally deprived monkeys as adults – Harlow observed adult monkey who were deprived of a real mother to see the effects of maternal deprivation. Found that the monkeys were severely impacted especially those raised by a wire mother. They were more aggressive, less sociable, mated less and as mothers some neglected their young or were aggressive towards them.
• Strength - real word application - findings helped in real life in many ways - including showing social workers the extent of damage child neglect /abuse can do and how important it is to properly care for children in their early days - also the findings help in taking care of captive monkey and making sure they have proper attachment figures.
• Strength - theoretical value - findings had a huge impact on psychologists understanding of mother-infant attachment - he showed that attachment is not as a result of being fed by a mother figure but because contact comfort - also showed the importance of the quality of early relationships for later development including successfully rearing children. - gave psychologists a good insight to human attachment as we are a similar species to monkeys.
• Weakness - ethical issues - research has been highly criticised due to the suffering of the monkeys - Harlow's findings showed the extent of the irreversible damage done to the monkeys- the monkeys are a very similar species to human so there suffering would likely be similar to human suffering - on to other hand though his research was very important - on the other hand thought his research was very important - but this does not excuse the suffering he put the monkeys through.