#loveresearch #psychologyexperiment #harryharlow #psychologyfacts #psychologie #psychologyfacts #psychologyfactsshorts #neuroscience #sciencefacts

Based on:
- Ward, James. "The developing brain." The student's guide to cognitive neuroscience, Routledge, 2020, pp. 128
- Wikipedia and other online sources.

Transcript:
Hey today we will talk about Harlow's research on love. Around 1960 many of the existing theories of love centered on the idea that the earliest attachment between a mother and child was just a way for the child to obtain food, relieve thirst and avoid pain. Harlow thought it gave a poor explanation so he came up with an experiment involving baby monkeys. Before we go on let's be clear, in today's world this experiment would be unethical. So the famous harlow's setup is like this: we have a baby monkey that has been removed from the mom just a few hours after being born and we have two surrogate mothers. One is made of soft cloth but provided no food. The other one is made of wire but provides food. So what's the observation of this experiment? The baby monkeys went to the wire mother only for food but preferred to spend their time with the soft, comforting cloth mother when they were not eating. The experiment showed that the baby monkeys spent more time with their cloth mother than with their wire mother even though the wire mother provided food. Based on these findings, Harry Harlow concluded that affection was the primary force behind the need for closeness. His research demonstrated that children become attached to caregivers that provide warmth and love, and that this love is not simply based on providing nourishment.

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