By Bec, Emily and Kaitlyn

Born in 1906 this American psychologist was a teacher of psychology not long after he had received his PhD and BA from Stanford University. He shed light on Human behaviour and development by undergoing numerous tests on the social behaviour of monkeys. WHO IS HARRY HARLOW?

During the 1950’s and 1960’s Harlow conducted numerous experiments to examine the development of infants regarding the non existence of a mother and how that effected their behaviours later in life. HARLOW’S RESEARCH

H arlow’s first experiments were those to test the relationship of a monkey and its mother. Harlow would remove the infant from its mother and give it the choice of two surrogate mothers. One which was covered in cloth the other made of wire that was uncovered. Often the monkey would choose the soft mother even if the wire mother provided food. This showed Harlow the desire for comfort and parenting in monkeys often out weighed the need for food. He referred to these experiments as “The Nature of Love”. After months of being with the surrogate mother Harlow would place the infant and the mother in unknown surroundings and found that the infant would cower to its mother for protection. Once the infant were fully developed they showed abnormal behaviour in adult life, such as epilepsy-like symptoms, depressive symptoms and even reproductive natures were absent. MATERNAL DEPRIVATION

In Harlow’s Isolation Experiments he would isolate an infant monkey for months or even years on end, the monkey would have no social contact with other monkeys. Monkeys were put into different degrees of isolation. Those monkey who were partially isolated showed abnormal behaviours such as blank staring, self mutilation and walking in circles. Monkeys that were completely isolated showed severe psychological disturbances. ISOLATION EXPERIMENTS

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