Book Reading #23 - Opening Skinner's Box

Chapter 6: Monkey Love

Summary

This chapter talks about Harry Halow's experiments with primates to find what's love. Harry Harlow himself experienced bouts of depression throughout his life and in school, he did not fit in. When Harlow moved to Madison, he began testing monkey intelligence, sort of simian IQ profile. Harlow separated the new born monkeys from their mothers. He observed that they became extremely attached to the terry cloth towels. He came up with the theory, that the sense of "touch" is the basis of forming love. The terry cloth towel was soft and that's what the monkeys used to touch and they became extremely attached to those towels. Harlow then made surrogate mothers, one made out of wire and sharp nails but this one had milk. Other surrogate mother was made out of terry cloth towels but it was dry. The monkeys were still attached to the terry cloth surrogate mother, even though they went to the other one only when they were hungry. Thus, Harlow concluded that "touch" and not "taste" was the basis of forming love.

To examine the power of touch, he put some new born monkeys with Iron Maidens, who pumped freezing water over their children, punched and stabbed the children. No matter what the torture, the babies came back to her. This showed that love is very strong and that we are creatures of faith. Since only touch was important, this notion changed the idea of neonatal care.

However, later he observed that cloth-mothered monkeys were violent and anti-social. So, there was something more than just touch that was important for their development. If the monkeys weren't allowed to socialize and play with other monkeys while they were growing up, they would turn hostile towards them later on. Len Rosenblum, one of the Harlow's students proved that it was "touch","motion" and "play" that lead to the development of a normal monkey.

Discussion

I think it was very cruel to separate new born monkeys from their mothers and then torturing them with different types of experimentation. However, the experiment did teach us something of tremendous value. Now we know what's needed for a proper development of a child. The contributions of Harlow and his students to the field of psychology is tremendous, however, the cruelty against those poor animals can definitely not be forgotten.