What was the "cupboard love" theory of attachment that Harlow's experiments were designed to test?
A: The theory that infants become attached to whoever keeps them in a warm, comfortable environment
B: The behaviourist and psychoanalytic view that infants become attached to their mothers primarily because the mother satisfies hunger through feeding
C: The evolutionary view that attachment evolved to keep infants close to an adult who could protect them from predators
D: The cognitive view that infants form attachments based on the mother's contingent responsiveness to their emotional signals
Correct: The behaviourist and psychoanalytic view that infants become attached to their mothers primarily because the mother satisfies hunger through feeding
The "cupboard love" theory was the dominant mid-20th century account of infant attachment, held by both behaviourists (who saw the mother as a conditioned reinforcer associated with food delivery) and Freudians (who emphasised the oral stage and the breast as the primary source of libidinal satisfaction and attachment). The common element was that feeding was primary — the mother mattered because she was the provider of nutrition, and attachment was a secondary drive derived from hunger reduction. Harlow's experiment was specifically designed to pit two surrogates against each other — one that provided food and one that provided soft physical contact — to test which was the primary driver of attachment behaviour.
How did Harlow's two "surrogate mothers" differ from each other in his foundational experiment?
A: One surrogate moved and made sounds; the other was stationary and silent
B: One surrogate was made of wire mesh but had a feeding bottle; the other was covered in soft terrycloth but provided no food
C: One surrogate was warm; the other was kept at room temperature
D: One surrogate was present only during the day; the other was present only at night
Correct: One surrogate was made of wire mesh but had a feeding bottle; the other was covered in soft terrycloth but provided no food
Harlow constructed two types of surrogate "mothers" for infant rhesus monkeys separated from their biological mothers at birth. The "wire mother" was a bare wire mesh cylinder with a wooden head — functional but offering no softness or contact comfort — and had a feeding bottle attached to it so the infant could nurse. The "cloth mother" was a wire cylinder covered in soft terrycloth — warm and tactilely comfortable — but had no feeding bottle. This design allowed Harlow to separately measure the contribution of food provision versus contact comfort to attachment behaviour, by observing which surrogate the infants preferred to spend time with.
What did Harlow's monkeys do when placed with both surrogate mothers, and what did this demonstrate?
A: Monkeys spent approximately equal time with both surrogates, supporting the cupboard love theory
B: Monkeys spent the majority of time (~17–18 hours/day) clinging to the cloth mother, going to the wire mother only to feed, demonstrating that contact comfort, not food, is the primary basis of attachment
C: Monkeys spent all time with the wire mother because food is a stronger reinforcer than tactile comfort
D: Monkeys showed no preference, but those raised with the cloth mother showed better health outcomes
Correct: Monkeys spent the majority of time (~17–18 hours/day) clinging to the cloth mother, going to the wire mother only to feed, demonstrating that contact comfort, not food, is the primary basis of attachment
The infants spent approximately 17–18 hours per day clinging to the cloth mother regardless of which surrogate provided food. They went to the wire mother only to feed, and then returned to the cloth mother. When frightened by a novel or fear-inducing stimulus (such as a wind-up mechanical toy), the monkeys ran immediately to the cloth mother — not the wire mother — and used her as a secure base from which to gradually explore the threatening object. This directly contradicted the cupboard love theory: food provision was insufficient to establish primary attachment. Physical contact — warmth, softness, the sensation of clinging — was the primary driver.
What is the concept of the "secure base," and how did Harlow's monkeys illustrate it?
A: A physical location in the monkey's cage that provided predictable food delivery — the wire mother's location
B: An attachment figure from whom the infant explores outward and to whom it returns when frightened, using the figure as a source of safety from which to regulate distress
C: The internal working model an infant develops that represents the self as worthy of care
D: A state of physiological homeostasis associated with the satiation of hunger and tactile needs
Correct: An attachment figure from whom the infant explores outward and to whom it returns when frightened, using the figure as a source of safety from which to regulate distress
John Bowlby articulated the concept of the "secure base" in his attachment theory: the primary attachment figure serves as a safe haven from which the infant can explore the environment, returning to the attachment figure when stressed, frightened, or uncertain. Harlow's monkeys showed precisely this pattern. When placed in an unfamiliar room, monkeys raised with a cloth mother initially huddled in fear against her, then gradually explored outward — often returning to touch or cling before venturing further. When the cloth mother was removed, exploration ceased and the infants froze in fear or showed distress. Monkeys raised with only the wire mother showed no such pattern — they did not use her as a secure base, and showed more extreme distress when exposed to novel environments.
What were the long-term consequences for monkeys raised in total social isolation (separated from both mothers and peers)?
A: Isolated monkeys recovered fully within a few weeks of being reintroduced to social groups
B: Isolated monkeys showed severe and lasting social, emotional, and behavioural deficits — including self-harm, inability to mate, and failure to parent their own offspring
C: Isolated monkeys showed normal social behaviour but reduced cognitive performance on learning tasks
D: Isolated monkeys developed unusually strong attachment to human caregivers as a compensatory mechanism
Correct: Isolated monkeys showed severe and lasting social, emotional, and behavioural deficits — including self-harm, inability to mate, and failure to parent their own offspring
Monkeys raised in total social isolation — separated from all social contact, not just mothers — showed profound, often permanent consequences. Those isolated for 3–6 months or more showed stereotyped rocking and self-clasping behaviour, were unable to engage in normal social interaction with peers, were terrified of other monkeys, and failed to mate successfully. Females who were artificially inseminated and gave birth were typically "motherless mothers" who ignored, neglected, or actively abused their infants. These findings demonstrated that the effects of early social deprivation are not merely emotional but profoundly disrupt the development of the full social and reproductive behavioural repertoire. The severity and permanence of these effects depended on the duration of isolation: 3 months produced severe but partly reversible deficits; 12 months produced apparently permanent damage.
How did Harlow's findings relate to and support John Bowlby's attachment theory?
A: Harlow's work contradicted Bowlby, who maintained that feeding was the primary basis of attachment
B: Harlow provided the first controlled experimental evidence for Bowlby's claim that attachment is a primary drive rooted in proximity-seeking and contact comfort, not secondary to feeding
C: Bowlby designed the Harlow experiments; they were always intended as direct tests of his theoretical model
D: Harlow's work was conducted after Bowlby's theory was already established, providing retrospective empirical support
Correct: Harlow provided the first controlled experimental evidence for Bowlby's claim that attachment is a primary drive rooted in proximity-seeking and contact comfort, not secondary to feeding
Bowlby and Harlow developed their contributions in parallel during the 1950s, and their work was mutually reinforcing. Bowlby's attachment theory — drawing on ethology (Lorenz's imprinting), evolutionary theory, and clinical observation of deprived children — proposed that attachment is a primary biological drive serving proximity to a protective caregiver, independent of feeding. Harlow provided the first controlled experimental evidence for this claim with non-human primates: his monkeys chose comfort over food, demonstrating that contact comfort was primary. The two men acknowledged each other's contributions, and Harlow's experimental evidence became canonical support for Bowlby's theoretical framework. Together they displaced the cupboard love theory from mainstream developmental psychology.
What are the main ethical criticisms of Harlow's research programme?
A: Harlow used deception on the monkeys' human caregivers, who were not told the study's true purpose
B: The studies caused deliberate and severe psychological suffering to the infant monkeys, including permanent social impairment — suffering that would not be sanctioned under modern animal research ethics
C: Harlow used species inappropriate for generalisation to humans, making the findings scientifically invalid
D: Harlow's funding came from the US military, creating a conflict of interest that biased his findings
Correct: The studies caused deliberate and severe psychological suffering to the infant monkeys, including permanent social impairment — suffering that would not be sanctioned under modern animal research ethics
Harlow's isolation experiments are among the most ethically controversial in the history of psychology or animal research. The infant monkeys in total isolation experiments suffered severe, observable distress and lasting psychological damage. Harlow designed some of his later "pit of despair" devices specifically to induce depression-like states in monkeys — which he described with characteristic dark irony. His work contributed significantly to the reform of animal research ethics: the Animal Welfare Act revisions in the US, and guidelines requiring that researchers consider and minimise distress in animal subjects, were partly driven by reactions to Harlow-style isolation studies. No institutional ethics board today would sanction the total isolation procedures used in the 1960s studies.
What practical changes to childcare and infant health practices followed from Harlow's findings and the attachment research they supported?
A: Hospitals began discouraging mother-infant physical contact immediately after birth to allow infants to become more independent
B: Contact-based practices — kangaroo care for premature infants, immediate skin-to-skin mother-infant contact at birth, and criticism of cold institutionalised childcare — all gained support from the scientific evidence Harlow's work helped establish
C: Harlow's findings led to the recommendation that all infants be bottle-fed rather than breastfed, since attachment does not depend on feeding
D: The findings had no impact on clinical or childcare practice because the generalisability from monkeys to humans was too uncertain
Correct: Contact-based practices — kangaroo care for premature infants, immediate skin-to-skin mother-infant contact at birth, and criticism of cold institutionalised childcare — all gained support from the scientific evidence Harlow's work helped establish
Harlow's findings, combined with Bowlby's attachment theory and Spitz's observations of hospitalised and institutionalised infants, contributed to substantial changes in childcare practice. The mid-20th century norm of discouraging maternal "spoiling" — summed up in Truby King's advice that infants should be fed on schedule and not "picked up whenever they cried" — was directly challenged by the evidence that physical contact comfort was a primary psychological need, not an indulgence. Neonatal units began implementing skin-to-skin contact ("kangaroo care") for premature infants, which has been shown to improve developmental outcomes. Research on Eastern European orphanages in the 1990s — showing that social and tactile deprivation produces lasting cognitive and emotional impairment — extended Harlow's animal findings to human contexts.
Harlow's Monkeys and Contact Comfort
What was the "cupboard love" theory of attachment that Harlow's experiments were designed to test?
About this quiz
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Harry Harlow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison conducted a series of experiments with rhesus macaque monkeys that overturned a long-standing assumption about the nature of maternal attachment. The prevailing "cupboard love" theory — held by behaviourists and Freudians alike — maintained that infants become attached to their mothers primarily because mothers provide food.
Harlow's studies showed something entirely different: it was not feeding but physical contact comfort that drove attachment behaviour. His work provided the first controlled experimental evidence for what John Bowlby was simultaneously articulating in theoretical terms, and it permanently changed how psychologists, clinicians, and society at large understand the emotional needs of infants.