harlow

• Harlow that monkeys have an innate, unlearned need for contact comfort, suggesting that attachment concerns emotional security more than food.
• Contact comfort is associated with lower levels of stress and a willingness to explore, indicating emotional security.
• A strength of the study is that it conducted in a controlled lab setting.

  This means that Harlow was able to control potential extraneous variables such as monkeys being taken away from their mothers straight after birth, so the babies were not being exposed to any love or attention from biological mothers.

  This means that Harlow was measuring what he intended to measure and so the study has high internal validity as it allowed a cause and effect relationship to be established.
• However, this is also a limitation since the highly controlled lab setting used is not reflective of real life situations and may cause monkeys to behave in an artificial manner.

  This means that Harlow was not necessarily measuring the real-life attachment formation and so the study can be criticised for lacking ecological validity.
• Harlow's findings have had an impact on psychologists' understanding of human mother-infant attachment. Harlow showed that attachment develops as a result of contact comfort and the importance of the quality of early relationships for later social development.

  This supports the external validity of his conclusions as they can be applied to species beyond monkeys for mother-infant attachment.
• It has helped social workers understand risk factors in child neglect and abuse and so intervene to prevent it.

  The research is also important for the care of captive monkeys as it has led to understanding the importance of proper attachment figures for baby monkeys in zoos and in breeding programmes in the wild.

  conclusions can be applied to different practical settings to improve quality of life for infants.