Harlow

• Harlow

  > Aim - To investigate whether food or comfort is more important in the formation of attachments

  > Method - Lab experiment
• Harlow

  Procedure

  > 16 baby rhesus monkeys were separated from their mothers at birth and brought up in cages.

  >The cages contained surrogate mothers – A wire mother with milk (provided food) and a cloth mother without milk (provided comfort).

  > The amount of time spent with each mother was recorded

  > The monkeys were frightened with a loud noise to test which mother they preferred when stressed

  > The long-term effects were recorded, such as sociability and relationships to their future offspring.
• Harlow

  Findings

  > Monkeys spent more time with the cloth mother than the wire mother.

  > When frightened the monkeys would go to the cloth mother.

  > The monkeys later in life had emotional damage such as being much more timid, being easily bullied, difficulty mating and females being inadequate mothers when they were older.
• Harlow

  Conclusion

  > Contact comfort is the most important factor when forming an attachment
• Harlow AO3

  :) Practical applications

  > The principles of the theory that contact comfort is most important can be used in the real world to highlight risk factors and find prevention strategies for poor human attachments

  > Used by clinical psychologists to prevent poor outcomes eg. problematic future relationships

  > Therefore an important part of applied psychology when explaining the formations of attachment
• Harlow AO3

  :( Animal bias

  > Human behaviour may be more complex then animals

  > Human emotion is more sophisticated then animals

  > Therefore there are issues with extrapolating the findings of Harlows research into human attachment
• Harlow AO3

  :( Raises ethical issues

  > Monkeys suffered greatly - emotional issues later on in life and sometimes died

  > Limiting Harlows research into attachments in animals