The Importance of Mother Love

Question: How does the interaction of mother and child affect the development of the infant?

Hypothesis: The monkeys with a more realistic version of a mother develop a more normal behavior, because they have an emotional attachment.

Study Type: The Rhesus Monkey experiment was a laboratory observation, because it was a made up setting and it was done in a laboratory, not in the natural environment.

Ethical Issues: The experiment brought a lot of problems to the monkeys involved, for example they suffered of anorexia after being separated from the mothers, they also suffered because of the separation anxiety. Some of the monkeys even died.

Harry Harlow separated infant monkeys from their mothers short after the birth. He isolated them from the outside world. After a few weeks he gave the monkeys a choice between two fake mothers, one made of wire with a bottle of milk attached, the other mother was made out of smooth cloth but without any food. Harlow observed that the infant would go to the wire mum to drink but develop an attachment to the smooth warmed cloth mum. When the monkeys were scared they ran to their cloth mother to feel secure. But when only the wire mother or no mother was with them, the infants started to run around screaming. Harlow also realized that the monkeys raised with just a wire mum had serious problems digesting the milk and they lost weight. This experiment shows that the most important thing about the mother-child bond is the body contact to develop a feeling of security. When the monkeys got older they were separated for three days from their cloth mum. When they were reunited the monkey clung to their mother and didn’t let go to explore like it had done before the separation. Harlow’s explanation for that was that the need for contact comfort was stronger than the need to explore.

Authors: Javiera Wood and Lucia Schroth