Harlow's Psychological Experiments On Rhesus Monkeys

I have chosen to write my essay on Harry “Israel” Harlow and his psychological experiments on maternal-separation, dependency needs and social isolation on Rhesus Monkeys. A little background on Harlow, he received his BA and PhD in experimental psychology from Stanford University. Interesting fact, Harlow started college at Reed College in Portland, Oregon before passing an aptitude test which resulted in him getting into Stanford where he started as an English major before changing to be a Psychology major. While studying at Stanford, he worked with Calvin Perry Stone, an animal behaviorist, Walter Richard Miles, a vision expert, who all were supervised by Lewis Terman, who developed the Stanford-Binet IQ. Upon finishing his doctoral,

Between 1963 and 1968, Harlow created his two surrogate “mothers” for the young Rhesus monkeys to choose from, one that was terrycloth and one that was wire. The purpose of the surrogate moms was to see which the monkeys would choose comfort or food more. In this first study they found the monkeys only went to the wire surrogate for food but would stay with the cloth mother the rest of the time regardless if it had food or not. It was the same when they would start with noises to scare them to see which they ran to, in the end they always went to the terrycloth mother. Later in the experiment they would put the monkey and the terrycloth mother in a room. The monkeys would stay attached to the surrogate tell it felt comfortable enough to explore. The baby would return occasionally to get comfort from the mother before exploring again. When placed in a room without a mother or with the wire mother it’s was the same reaction of a scared monkey as they cried and screamed looking for the terrycloth mother. They also found that the monkeys gained weight at the same rate but monkeys raised by the wire mother had diarrhea more frequently. I found that this experiment is a little more humane than the next phase of experiments. At least no monkeys died or had to be put

It was in fact three eighths of an inch wire mesh floor one inch above the bottom which allowed waste material to drop through a drain out the holes. It had a food box and a water bottle holder with a pyramid top so that the monkeys couldn’t hang. Harlow place monkeys between the ages of three months to three years, who had already bonded with their mother, in the chamber for up to ten weeks. His results were that the monkeys stopped moving around and huddled in the corner which were signs that they were depressed. I feel that he didn’t have to build such a crude box to put these poor little monkeys in, or at least leave it so they can do what’s in their nature and let them hang off the ceiling. Of course these monkeys would be sitting huddled in corners, they had nothing to do and no one around to socialize with and missed there