Book Reading #23 - Opening Skinner's Box



Book Author: Lauren Slater  

Chapter 6: Monkey Love

Summary

Lauren Slater relates Harry Harlow's  research on rhesus macaque monkeys. Slater begins by introducing Harlow as a child. She mentions the absence of love while he was growing up which may explain the studies he did later on attachment which she describes. In his early work he took infant monkeys from their mothers and observed what they did with terry cloth towels, wire-framed monkey moms with milk and wire-framed monkey moms covered with soft cloth. What he observed was that the monkeys would interact with the soft surrogate mother and favor it over the wire-framed one that fed them. In later studies Harlow had the surrogate mothers hit them with cold water or stab them. The babies still came back. This research made Harlow believe that the presence of a physical mother did not matter However, he then noticed that the monkeys with surrogate mothers could not interact properly with other monkeys and would inflict harm to themselves.

Discussion

I  did not like this chapter one bit and for some weird reason I do not recall being told this version of his experiment in my psychology class. My psychology professor seems to have omitted details... . I think the practices done on monkeys were immoral. I do not think that this kind of experimentation would be acceptable by public opinion today, and I also believe the only way this could happen today would be in a secret laboratory.