31 Facts About Harry Harlow

Harry Frederick Harlow was an American psychologist best known for his maternal-separation, dependency needs, and social isolation experiments on rhesus monkeys, which manifested the importance of caregiving and companionship to social and cognitive development.

Harry Harlow then investigated whether the infants had a preference for bare-wire mothers or cloth-covered mothers in different situations: with the wire mother holding a bottle with food, and the cloth mother holding nothing, or with the wire mother holding nothing, while the cloth mother held a bottle with food.

Harry Harlow was born on October 31,1905, to Mabel Rock and Alonzo Harlow Israel.

Harry Harlow was born and raised in Fairfield, Iowa, the third of four brothers.

Harry Harlow attended Stanford in 1924, and subsequently became a graduate student in psychology, working directly under Calvin Perry Stone, a well-known animal behaviorist, and Walter Richard Miles, a vision expert, who were all supervised by Lewis Terman.

Harry Harlow studied largely under Terman, the developer of the Stanford-Binet IQ Test, and Terman helped shape Harry Harlow's future.

Harry Harlow was unsuccessful in persuading the Department of Psychology to provide him with adequate laboratory space.

Harry Harlow received numerous awards and honors, including election to the United States National Academy of Sciences, the Howard Crosby Warren Medal, election to the American Philosophical Society, the National Medal of Science, election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Gold Medal from the American Psychological Foundation.

Harry Harlow served as head of the Human Resources Research branch of the Department of the Army from 1950 to 1952, head of the Division of Anthropology and Psychology of the National Research Council from 1952 to 1955, consultant to the Army Scientific Advisory Panel, and president of the American Psychological Association from 1958 to 1959.

Harry Harlow's death led Harlow to depression once more, for which he was treated with electro-convulsive therapy.

Harry Harlow worked with the primates at Henry Vilas Zoo, where he developed the Wisconsin General Testing Apparatus to study learning, cognition, and memory.

Harry Harlow next chose to investigate if the infants had a preference for bare-wire mothers or cloth-covered mothers.

Harry Harlow described his experiments as a study of love.

Harry Harlow believed that contact comfort could be provided by either mother or father.

Critics of Harry Harlow's research have observed that clinging is a matter of survival in young rhesus monkeys, but not in humans, and have suggested that his conclusions, when applied to humans, overestimate the importance of contact comfort and underestimate the importance of nursing.

Harry Harlow first reported the results of these experiments in "The Nature of Love", the title of his address to the sixty-sixth Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association in Washington, DC, August 31,1958.

Harry Harlow tried to reintegrate the monkeys who had been isolated for six months by placing them with monkeys who had been raised normally.

Harry Harlow wrote that total social isolation for the first six months of life produced "severe deficits in virtually every aspect of social behavior".

Since Harry Harlow's pioneering work on touch, recent researches have found evidence to support that touch during infancy is very important to health and touch deprivation can be harmful.

Harry Harlow was well known for refusing to use conventional terminology, instead choosing deliberately outrageous terms for the experimental apparatus he devised.

Harry Harlow tried to rehabilitate monkeys that had been subjected to varying degrees of isolation using various forms of therapy.

Freud constructed the foundation for Harry Harlow to continue and be successful in his work.

Harry Harlow's work influenced Bruno Bettelheim, director of the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School in Chicago.

Harry Harlow was very fascinated with Harlow and his study with monkeys.

Harry Harlow thought that he could use what Harlow learned in his own work.

Harry Harlow believed that the relationship between mother and child was created by the mother providing tactile comfort, meaning infants have a natural need to touch and cling to something for emotional support.

Harry Harlow helped further research that contributed to the discovery of RAD.

Harry Harlow believed, and his study results showed, that the bond between mother and child in the first few years of life is extremely important for the mental health and development of the child.

Harry Harlow's experiments gave psychologists experimental data for the causes and development of RAD, which helped reduce misdiagnosis.

Blum reported in her own writing that even Suomi, a former student and supporter, felt that he had to wait until Harry Harlow retired from the University of Wisconsin before he could shut down his unethical "pit of despair" projects; they had been causing him "nightmares".

Harry Harlow won a national medal of science based on his work with monkeys, in addition to being named the president of the American Psychological Association.