Human Growth and Development / Unit 4 HGD 0482 review, 2 to 3 minutes
The Harlows' Monkeys
The idea
Harry and Margaret Harlow tested whether attachment comes from feeding. Infant rhesus monkeys were raised with two artificial mothers: one made of wire that held a bottle of milk, and one covered in soft cloth that gave no food. If feeding creates attachment, the monkeys should have preferred the wire mother. They did not. They spent nearly twenty-three hours a day clinging to the cloth mother and went to the wire mother only to feed. When something frightening was placed in the cage, the monkeys raised with a cloth mother ran to her, clung, calmed, and then went back to explore. Monkeys raised with only a wire mother rocked, clutched themselves and did not explore. The finding was that contact comfort, not feeding, is central to attachment, and it contradicted the feeding account that Freud's theory implied. Babies have social as well as physical needs.
In practice
Two figures in one cage: a bare wire frame holding a milk bottle, and a soft cloth figure holding nothing, with the infant monkey wrapped around the cloth one, stretching across only to drink.
Where people slip
The misconception is that babies bond with whoever feeds them. The Harlows showed that comfort matters more than food. The study also has limits that a careful reader should hold. The subjects were monkeys, not humans, so the findings are evidence by analogy; they carry weight because they fit human research, such as Bowlby's work with institution-raised children who were fed and clothed yet suffered emotionally. And the rocking and self-clutching of the wire-reared monkeys show the real cost the experiments imposed. The central finding has held; its application to human infants rests on that converging human evidence.
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