Evaluate the Usefulness of Harlow’s Work for Understanding Human Attachmen

Coursework title: Evaluate the usefulness of Harlow’s work for understanding human attachment.

Attachment is the drive a human being is born with, theorised by John Bowlby (1958), to cause an infant wish to become emotionally close to 'one particular caregiver' (Comer, Furnham, and Gould, 2013). The concept is critical in any discussion of 'the role of parenting' and therefore, its discussion is rather crucial to assist in an individual's development (Gross 1987). Harry Harlow was one of the most influential researcher in the field of attachment, but due to a high amount of his work being generated using non-human subjects, the usefulness of his work in relation to human attachment can be questioned.

Influenced by Bowlby's work on 'Maternal Deprivation' (1951), which claimed the attachment figure of a mother is almost useless if delayed by over two years, Harlow, in 1958, conducted a study to understand whenever 'infant-caregiver bonding' was mainly caused by the mother's job of 'satisfying the infant's need for nourishment' (Bremmer, Holt, Passer, Smith, Sutherland & Vliek, 2015). To discover this, he separated 8 Rhesus Monkeys from their biological mothers 6-12 hours after their births, instead raising them in cages, with artificial 'surrogate mothers;' one made from a bare wire cylinder connected to a feeding tube running through its chest (for feeding), and the other a wire cylinder covered by a soft terry cloth (for comfort). When exposed to a 'teddy bear drummer,' they would jump to and cling tightly to the cloth covered 'mother' seeking 'contact comfort,' as they were terrified. They also fed whilst clinging to the cloth mother and leaning over to the feeding mother, showing their attachment to the cloth mother. Harlow considered this evidence to suggest that the notion of comfort was more important than even that of nourishment in an infant, proving their emotional needs more necessary to the infants than physiological needs.

This research is supported by that of Konrad Lorenz (1937), who coined the term 'imprinting.' Similar to Harlow, Lorenz's work was focused on using animal as participants in his research. He split a large clutch of greylag goose eggs into two groups. One groups hatching was completely orthodox, whilst the other group of eggs were incubated, and arranged so the first thing they'd see was Lorenz himself. Upon hatching, this second group proceeded to follow Lorenz around. This was the process he described as 'imprinting.'

As described by Deborah Blum (2002), most psychologists were mainly concerned with either behaviour or psychoanalysis' understanding of attachment, which is to say that it is created via food. By feeding off its mother, a child's hunger drive can be satisfied, therefore the infant will classically conditioning itself to associate its mother with food, creating the attachment. With Harlow's study discovering that an infant will seek comfort over food when concerned or frightened, he changed the fundamental understanding of human attachment (Tarvis, 2014).

By establishing this, the importance of his research is undeniable. His work influenced extensive research into attachment, as well as Bowlby's proposal (1969) that attachment in infancy is formed due to a 'biologically programmed need for a secure base from which to explore and learn about the environment, and yet return to for protection should anything frightening occur' (Bremmer et al, 2015)

It also lead Harlow to be presented as the recipient of the 'Gold Medal Award' in 1973, which is presented to individual 'in recognition of a distinguished and long-continued record of scientific and scholarly accomplishment' ("American Psychological Foundation Awards for 1973" (1973), further displaying the usefulness of his work in human attachment.

Despite the implied importance of the study, in 1970, Harlow himself, in conjuncture with Stephen Suomi, explained some limits drawn by the study, creating issues in its creditability. Whilst monkeys raised conventionally seldom 'soil their mother's bodies,' the monkeys used in the experiment soiled the cloth mothers with 'efficiency and enthusiasm,' demonstrating not only a lack of realism ascertained by the laboratory environment, but also creates ethical issues, due to this having adverse health effects on the monkeys.

The lack in mundane realism is further continued by the lack of human subjects. There are limits making it unjustifiable to using a human child in an experiment, a rhesus monkey is ideally suited to neurological research (Harlow, 1959). Most young rhesus monkeys are 'good psychological subjects' due to 'readily adapting to taming' as well as being able to perform thoroughly despite considerable distraction, and will 'accept frequent errors and frustrations without abandoning the problem' (Harlow, 2008). However, their intelligence is too lacking to be comparable with human minds, even in comparison to anthropoid apes. Agrillo, Beran & Parrish (2014) compared the perception of a human to that of a rhesus monkey in response to the 'Solitaire Illusion.' The results discovered by the two species greatly differed, suggesting using the minds of rhesus monkeys to understand human behaviour is a fallacy.

His work, however, cannot simply be considered useless in its understanding of human attachment. When the rhesus monkeys used in the experiments were returned to their mothers six months later, they displayed traits of 'social impairment' (Harlow & Suomi, 1970), acting indifferent, terrified or aggressive, and later as adults, highly abusive to their first-borns. These results are in concordance of those found by Bowlby in 1944, a study conducted using human test subjects.

Bowlby theorised that the relationship between a mother and her child during the first five years of its life were the most important in reducing issues such as juvenile delinquency, antisocial behaviour and emotional difficulties. He therefore aimed to examine the long term effects of maternal deprivation by interviewing 44 adolescent thieves, as well as a further 44 children to act as controls. The participants were all referred via a child protection program in London; the thieves due to their stealing, the control group due to emotional problems. The results showed that more than half of the thieves had experienced separation from their mothers for at least six months during the first five years of their lives, whereas only two children from the control group experienced such an upbringing.

Due to the human participants of the Bowlby study and the rhesus monkey participants both displaying poor socialisation, it can be assumed Harlow's research is applicable to understanding human attachment. As the results both conclude that a lack of relationship between a mother and a child at a young age can lead to a poor psychological mentality, Harlow's research proves vital in helping children be exposed to an environment which best suits their needs to become well adjusted. Orphanages, adoption agencies, social services groups and child care providers changed their approach in the care of children due to the research (Maestripieri, 2004).

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