MONKEYS AND THE NATURE OF LOVE

It was Harry Harlow that believed to understand how to raise humans we could learn much more by altering the upbringing of monkeys and analyzing their responses to certain conditions. Harlow supposed that every child has a need of love and affection. When reading “The Nature of Love” by Harry Harlow, Harlow did many experiments with monkeys using real and surrogate monkeys as mothers to prove that there is a strong psychological need for love and affection as well as food and shelter. The experiment consisted of taking baby monkeys away from their mothers at birth and placing them in an environment with a surrogate mother. One mother was made of wire and one mother was made of cloth. In “The Nature of Love”, Harlow, concluded that even though the mother made of wire had milk it was cold unlike the mother that was made of cloth was warm and the monkey needed a material that resembled the warm contact of a real mother monkey. A clear connection can be made to human parents. It is the love and affection that demonstrates to a human that there is security and love as well as food and shelter. If love and affection is removed their will be damaging psychological effects to the upbringing of the child but if these affections are present then the child will feel an intimate attachment so there will be no psychological effects. During the experimentation it was apparent that the baby monkeys chose the warm surrogate mother over the cold wire mother because regardless to the food the warm mother symbolizes security and safety whenever the baby monkey is scared. There were many experimentations done were the baby monkey would run to the surrogate mother clinch to her side and accustom themselves with the mother monkeys face and body. As demonstrated by the experimentations of Harlow the baby monkeys began to form a sense of security to the surrogate monkeys. These actions and behaviors would quickly change if the mother was not present in the room. As seen in Harlow’s experiment the baby monkeys would freeze, start crying, panicking, and frantically clutching every object that would resemble the mother. It was interesting to see that the actions were similar when placed in a cage with a wire mother. During Harlow’s studies he had observed the behaviour of the baby monkeys raised by their own mothers. The baby monkey spends many hours a day clinging to its real mother. If away from the mother when frightened, it rushes to her and in her presence shows comfort and composure even though this even held true with the warm surrogate mother demonstrates that baby monkeys as well as humans need to have a sense of togetherness by actions such as love and affection.