Harry Harlow
Harry Harlow was an influential American psychologist known for his groundbreaking research on attachment and social isolation, particularly through experiments involving rhesus monkeys. Born on October 31, 1905, in Iowa, Harlow struggled with personal challenges in his youth, ultimately pursuing a career in psychology after transferring to Stanford University. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he shifted his focus from studying rats to primates, drawn by their psychological similarities to humans.
Harlow's most notable experiments began in 1957, where he investigated the dynamics of maternal attachment by isolating infant monkeys from their mothers. He created surrogate mothers made of cloth and wire, demonstrating that the monkeys preferred the comfort of the cloth mothers over the feeding capabilities of the wire ones. His findings suggested that emotional attachment and the need for comfort were fundamental to child development, challenging previous notions that attachment was solely based on the provision of food.
Despite the significant insights gained from his research, Harlow faced substantial criticism for the ethical implications of his experiments, which many deemed cruel. Nevertheless, his work had a lasting impact, influencing parenting practices and the understanding of emotional bonds in early development. Harlow's contributions earned him several prestigious awards before his death on December 6, 1981.
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Subject Terms
Harry Harlow
Psychologist
- Born: October 31, 1905
- Birthplace: Fairfield, Iowa
- Died: December 6, 1981
- Place of death: Tucson, Arizona
Also known as: Harry F. Israel
Education: Reed College; Stanford University
Significance: Harry Harlow was an American psychologist. He was best known for his experiments with rhesus monkeys to study the effects of abandonment, separation, and isolation. Some people called his experiments inhumane.
Background
Harry Harlow was born Harry F. Israel in Fairfield, Iowa, on October 31, 1905. His parents, Lon and Mabel Israel, were Jewish. His father was an inventor but did not have much luck with this profession. Harlow had depression as a child and liked to draw. He had problems fitting in at school.
After high school, he attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon. After one year, he took an aptitude test and then transferred to Stanford University in California. Harlow initially pursued a degree in English, but his grades were poor. He decided to switch his course of study to psychology after one semester.
At Stanford, Harlow studied with Lewis Terman, a psychologist who worked on the Stanford-Binet intelligence test. He acted as a mentor to Harlow. Harlow received a bachelor's degree in experimental psychology and then continued his education, receiving his doctorate in 1930 from Stanford. At this time, he decided to change his last name from Israel to Harlow. After he graduated from Stanford, he received a job teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Life's Work
At the University of Wisconsin, Harlow initially wanted to study rats. He eventually decided to use primates in his research because the animals were psychologically similar to humans. At first, he worked on developing an intelligence test for the monkeys.
Harlow then became interested in how abandonment, isolation, and stress affected humans. He decided to use rhesus monkeys in his experiment. Like human babies, the infant rhesus monkeys show a range of emotions and require nursing from their mothers. Because Harlow needed to study the monkeys throughout the course of their lives, and he needed to be able to access them regularly, he needed a space for them. He tried to convince the university to set up a separate facility for him to conduct the psychological experiments.
When this plan failed, Harlow and his graduate students found a building to host what became known as the Primate Laboratory. He started a rhesus monkey breeding colony at the site around 1932. Then he and his students prepared to work on the social isolation experiments. Harlow was fascinated with what drove the love between a mother and child. He began his experiments in 1957.
During the experiments, the monkeys were removed from their mother's care shortly after they were born. He put them alone in cages that had a towel covering the bottom of the cage. Harlow noticed that the monkeys grew attached to the towels. Harlow likened the monkeys' attachment to the towels to a human baby's attachment to a blanket.
Harlow first tested previous theories of attachment that said human attachment was based on drive reduction. For example, babies love their mothers because they have milk to reduce the drive of hunger. Harlow questioned if this was the main reason infants loved their mothers. He hand-fed the monkeys, and they did not react poorly when he took the bottles away from them. He then took their towels from them. The monkeys screamed and reacted poorly. This indicated that attachment includes comfort and safety rather than just food.
In another experiment, Harlow put the newborn monkeys in cages with two "surrogate mothers." One of the mothers was made of a soft cloth, while the other was made from hard wire. The wire mother had a bottle to nurse the monkey. The soft mother had no milk. He noticed that the monkeys only went to the wire mother to feed. They cuddled with the cloth one and went to it when they were scared. When researchers outfitted the cloth mother with a bottle, the monkeys did not bother with the wire one.
Harlow also found that the time spent cuddling with the soft mother was longer than they spent feeding with the wire one. He stated that this showed the primary purpose of a baby nursing was to have bodily contact with the mother; feeding was secondary. He concluded that love grew from touch.
Harlow then conducted other experiments, many of which people began to see as cruel and inhumane. He created mother surrogates that did not show affection. Some blew cold air onto the infant monkeys, while others rattled and poked the monkeys. Harlow thought that the infant monkeys would not react well to the unloving ways of these mothers. He was wrong. No matter what the mother monkey did to the infant monkeys, they still ran back to her for comfort.
In 1958, Harlow was elected president of the American Psychological Association. At one of the group's meetings, he gave a speech called "The Nature of Love" and showed clips of his experiments. He later printed an article of the same name in American Psychologist. He conducted further experiments on partial and full isolation.
However, as his experiments progressed, and the monkeys grew, some of his subjects began to show negative behavior. The monkeys who were mothered by the cloth surrogates became violent and antisocial, but most caught up socially with their peers over time. The monkeys nurtured by the wire mothers mostly remained socially incompetent. Harlow found that most of the monkeys in the experiments developed severe psychological disturbances; some even died. Harlow concluded that normal development depended on close ties formed early in life. He continued the experiments until 1963. He died on December 6, 1981, in Tucson, Arizona.
Impact
Harlow was criticized for his experiments, which many people deemed inhumane and cruel. Despite this, many people continued to use his research results. Many agreed that babies needed the comfort and touch of their mothers or other parental figures. Harlow's research even inspired products for babies and infants such as the sling to keep babies close to their parents' bodies. It also showed the importance of rocking and holding babies during feedings. Harlow won several awards for his work, including the Howard Crosby Warren Medal, the National Medal of Science, and the gold medal from the American Psychological Foundation.
Personal Life
In 1932, Harlow married Clara Mears. They had two sons and divorced in 1946. Harlow then married Margaret Kuenne. They had one son and one daughter. Kuenne died from cancer in 1971. In 1972, Harlow remarried Mears.
Bibliography
Cherry, Kendra. "Biography of Psychologist Harry Harlow." Very Well, 8 Sept. 2017, www.verywell.com/harry-harlow-biography-1905-1981-2795510. Accessed 1 Feb. 2018.
"Harry F. Harlow, Monkey Love Experiments." Adoption History Project, pages.uoregon.edu/adoption/studies/HarlowMLE.htm. Accessed 1 Feb. 2018.
"Harry Harlow." FamousPsychologists.org, www.famouspsychologists.org/harry-harlow. Accessed 1 Feb. 2018.
"Harry Harlow (1905–1981)." GoodTherapy.org, www.goodtherapy.org/famous-psychologists/harry-harlow.html07-03-2015. Accessed 1 Feb. 2018.
"People and Discoveries: Harry Harlow, 1905–1981." PBS, www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/bhharl.html. Accessed 1 Feb. 2018.
Slater, Lauren. "Monkey Love." Boston Globe, 21 Mar. 2004, archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/03/21/monkey‗love. Accessed 1 Feb. 2018.