animal studies - Harlow’s monkeys

• strength - practical value

  this research helped social workers to understand risk factors in child neglect and abuse and therefore to intervene and prevent it it has helped attachment in zoos and breeding programmes in the wild for animals
• weakness - ethics

  study created harmful long lasting effects on the monkeys
• weakness - generalising animal studies to human behaviour

  humans differ in important ways to animals - governed by conscious decisions
• weakness - confounding variables

  the two wired monkeys varied in other ways - the heads were different
• what did Harlow find?

  a mother figure had to be introduced within 90 days for an attachment to form - after this time it's nearly impossible to
• what were the long term effects on the monkeys after the study?

  they developed abnormally

  froze or fled when approached by other monkeys

  didn't show normal mating behaviour

  bred less than normal monkeys

  as mothers they neglected their young - some were attacked and killed by their mothers
• what were the findings of this study?

  the monkeys spent the most time with the soft cloth mother and only went to the other for food
• what two things did Harlow create for the monkeys?

  a wire monkey mother with a feeding bottle and a cloth monkey with no food
• what did he notice about the monkeys?

  they became distressed when their cage was cleaned as they had become attached to the sanitary pad at the bottom of it - like a security blanket