Discovering Love
Adam Zoll and Kai Reinstein
Background
• H. F. Harlow experiments with infant attachment to mother
• Proposition: Must be some basic need in infants for close contact with something soft in addition to biological needs
Method
• Infant monkeys• Two constructed mothers:– Soft Mother– Wire Mother
• Three experiments:– 8 monkeys with access to both mothers– Fear experiment– Open field test with unknown objects– Test attachment after period of separation
Results
• Enormous preference for soft mother
• Fulfillment of biological needs not as important in monkeys’ choice of mother
Significance
• Need for contact comfort in infants• Reforms in institutional settings
Criticism
• Psychological damage to monkeys without a soft mother in any experiment
• Ethical to experiment on monkeys?
Further Applications
• Harlow later tested effects of abuse on monkeys with abusive constructed mother– Contact comfort outweighs abuse
• Experiments with skin-to-skin contact