Surrogate Mother Experiment
Using a strange situation technique similar to the one created by attachment researcher mary ainsworth harlow allowed the young monkeys to explore a room either in the presence of their surrogate mother or in her absence.
Surrogate mother experiment. The surrogate mother experiment the experiment of affection an american psychologist named harry harlow became interested in researching the effects of affection towards children between 1957 to 1963. Many of the experiments harlow conducted on the rhesus macaque were heavily criticized because of their cruelty and limited value. The reason this experiment was considered controversial or unethical was because of the way the infant monkeys were treated. In an experiment called the open field test an infant was placed in a novel environment with novel objects.
Harlow s monkey experiment reinforced the importance of mother and child bonding. When the infant s surrogate mother was present it clung to her but then began venturing off to explore. The bare wire mother appears below. Harlow revealed the importance of a mother s love for healthy childhood.
One was a simple construction of wire and wood and the second was covered in foam rubber and soft terry cloth. Harry harlow with the mother surrogates he used to raise infant monkeys. The monkeys were traumatized with fear and loneliness throughout the experiment. Also most of the baby monkeys that grew up without a mother become very.
Harlow believed that it is at 90 days for monkeys and about 6 months for humans. Harlow suggested that the same results apply to human babies that the timing is critical when it comes to separating a child from his or her mother. The surrogate mother experiment was one of the notorious behavioral experiments conducted by the american psychologist harry frederick harlow. Codes of ethics broken in the experiment implications the consequences of this experiment was the harm of innocent monkeys.
Given a choice infant monkeys invariably preferred surrogate mothers covered with soft terry cloth and they spent a great deal of time cuddling with them above just as they would have with. The terry cloth mother is pictured above. In a later experiment harlow demonstrated that young monkeys would also turn to their cloth surrogate mother for comfort and security.