Reference Information
Title: Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century
Author: Lauren Slater
Editor: W.W Norton & Company, 2008
Chapter 6: Monkey Love
Summary
This chapter discussed the monkey experiments of Harlow, in which he demonstrated attachment. The experiments involved separating baby monkeys and providing a soft surrogate mother and a feeding machine in order to see what they preferred. Harlow showed that this created autistic-like monkeys, and he demonstrated three variables of love: touch, motion, and play. His findings were told to human mothers, resulting some changes in how society handled their kids.
Discussion
I found this article very interesting, and that before studying how this affected the monkeys, Harlow published his results and started making suggestions to how humans raised children. He should have considered the affects such a separation could have. In addition, I find it interesting that the mistreatment that occurred to the monkeys was allowed, although it did have controversy.
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