Analysis Of Harry Harlow's Attachment Theory

American psychologist Harry Harlow studied His attachment theory during the 1960’s. The attachment theory was first examined in the 1950’s by John Bowlby and James
Robertson. The theory of attachment initiated as Bowlby started contemplating the type of bond between a mother her and child. Harlow’s experiments on attachment query whether the provision of food or comfort is more vital in the creation of infant-mother attachment.

The independent variable in these experiments was the isolation that the monkeys were being exposed to. The dependent variable in these experiments was the reactions and behaviors exhibited by the monkeys. Harlow’s experiments were mainly conducted on Rhesus monkeys. These monkeys’ ages ranged from hours old infants

This could be changed if the experiment were to be revisited by using the knowledge that we have today from the original experiments. This could be done so that the animals that are participating aren’t put through so much trauma and emotional stress. Some parts of the original experiments were unnecessary and they did more harm than good. For example, the vertical chamber experiment where Harlow would isolate monkeys in vertical chambers for months to a year them let them interact with other monkeys so he could see what would happen. These types of experiments were absolutely unnecessary and they wouldn’t need to be

This causes them many problems later in life, especially when reproducing and when they had offspring of there own. It was found that the monkeys that had been experimented on were either very neglectful of there children and they refused to be touch or they became very abusive towards there children. These ethical issues should have been addressed by a research council or board who was funding the experimentations. One way to approach the issues is that although these experiments were brutal, and they were the cause of much emotional and physical harm to the rhesus monkeys they provided us with an astounding amount of knowledge and proof on Harlow’s hypotheses. “Harlow's experiment is sometimes justified as providing a valuable insight into the development of attachment and social behavior” (McLeod, 2018) the question was, what was more important to infants food or comfort and did either of these effects the attachment between mother and