Harlow's Monkeys 1959

Harlow did a number of studies on attachment in monkeys. His first ones were in 1959. He stated that monekys must form their attachment during the first year of life. His experiments took several forms:

• 1. Infant monkeys reared in isolation - some died, others were frightened and behaved in an abnormal manner. They could not interact with the other monkeys even when they were older.
• 2. Infant monkeys reared with surrogate mothers - either bare wire mothers or covered in soft terry towelling colth. A feeding bottle was attached to either the wire or the cloth bottle. When the monkeys had a choice of which to feed from they chose the cloth mother and spent more time clinging to her then the wire mesh mother. The infant would only go to this mother when hungry. Once fed, it would return to the cloth mother…