Harlow and rhesus monkeys 🐒

• Aim: To demonstrate that attachment was not based on feeding bond between mother and infant.
• Procedure

  1. Created 2 wire mothers with a different 'head'

  2. 1 mother wrapped in a cloth

  3. 8 infant Rhesus monkeys were studied for 165 days

  4. 4 monkeys - milk bottle on cloth mother and other 4 - milk bottle on wire mother

  5. Time measurements made of amount of time each infant spent with the two different mothers
• Observations

  Monkey infants' responses when frightened by - mechanical teddy bear etc.
• Long-Lasting Effects: 1959 - continued study as his rhesus monkeys grew up.

  • Noted many consequences to their early attachment experiences - motherless monkeys developed abnormally ( even if they did have contact comfort ).
  • Socially abnormal - froze or fled when approached by other monkeys
  • Sexually abnormal - did not show normal mating behaviour and did not cradle their own babies
• • Critical period effects ( like Lorenz ) - if motherless monkeys spent time with their 'peers' , they seemed to recover but this only happened before they were 3 months. Having more than six months with only a wire mother was something they did not appear to recover from.
• Evaluation:

  • Confounding Variable - criticism of that the 2 stimulus objects varied in more ways than being cloth-covered or not.

  2 heads also different, acted as confounding variable because varied systemically with IV ( mother being cloth-covered or not ) , possible that reason infant monkeys preferred one 'mother' to the other was because the cloth mother had a more attractive head.
• Conclusion of study lacks internal validity
• Ultimate aim of animal studies


  To be able to generalise the conclusions to human behaviour
• Humans differ in important ways as behaviour is governed by conscious decisions
• Number of studies found that observations of animal attachment behaviour are mirrored in studies of humans
• HARLOW SUPPORTED BY SCHAFFER AND EMERSON'S FINDINGS: 'Infants were not most attached to the person who fed them'
• Animal studies can act as a useful pointer in understanding human behaviour
• We should always seek confirmation by looking at research with humans
• • Ethics, study can not be done with humans, but there is also the question of whether it should be done with monkeys.

  Study created lasting emotional harm as the monkeys later found it difficult to form relationships with their peers, however experiment can be justified in terms of the significant effect it has had on our understanding of thethe processes of attachment, and the research derived from this study has been used to offer better care for human/primate infants
• Can be argued that benefits outweigh costs to animals involved in the study, such criticisms do not challenge the findings of the research but are important in monitoring what counts as good science.
• Conclusion of study lacks internal validity
• Aims of animal studies

  To generalise the conclusions to human behaviour
• Humans differ from animals in important ways as our behaviour is governed by conscious decisions
• Studies that found observations of animals and their actions are mirrored through studies of humans

  • Schaffer and Emerson's study (infants were not the most attached to the caregiver that fed them)
• While animal studies can act as a useful pointer in understanding human behaviour

  We should always seek confirmation by looking at research with humans
• • CV - the 2 stimulus objects had further variations rather than being cloth or not

  2 heads were different ( CV because varied systemically with IV - mother being cloth or not ). May be possible reason why monkeys preferred one mother to other other because the cloth had a more attractive head.