monkey priorities

[wildlyoscillate]

In the 1950’s Harlow was given the challenge of raising infant monkey’s and ensuring that their survival rate would be greater than that raised by cage raised mothers. In delivering diets rich in vitamins, iron extracts, penicillin, chloromycetin, 5% glucose, etc, Harlow decided to study the development of affectional responses of neonatal and infant monkeys to an artificial, inanimate mother, and so he built a surrogate mother which he “hoped and believed” would be a good surrogate mother. The surrogate was made from a block of wood, covered with sponge rubber, and sheathed in tan cotton terry cloth. A light bulb behind her radiated heat. The result was a “mother” that was soft and warm. Harlow constructed a second mother surrogate, a surrogate in which he deliberately built less than the maximal capability for contact comfort. This “mother” was made of wire-mesh, a substance that Harlow suggested was entirely adequate to provide postural support and nursing capability, and it was warmed by radiant heat. Harlow suggested that the second surrogate’s body differed in no essential way from that of the cloth mother surrogate other than in the quality of the contact comfort which she can supply. Harlow even arranged it so that the wire “mother” could feed the infant while the cloth mother could not. He found that the infants spend the vast proportion of their time on the cloth mother and only went to the wire mother for milk. Harlow noted that ‘These data make it obvious that contact comfort is a variable of overwhelming importance in the development of affectional response [meaning contact comfort], whereas lactation is a variable of negligible importance”.

In other words, affection beat nutrition. Love beat food.