Compare_and_Contrast_the_Work_of_Harry_Harlow_and_Mary_Ainsworth_on_Understanding_Attachment

Compare and contrast the work of Harry Harlow and Mary Ainsworth on understanding attachment Introduction Contrasting and comparing the work of Harry Harlow (1962) with the work of Mary Ainsworth (1953) on understanding attachment in children, shows that attachment is not based in cupboard love (the provision of food by the mother or the primary care giver) but is mainly formed through contact comfort and the sensitive responsiveness to the child’s signals provided by the mother or by the primary care giver. Mary Ainsworth’s study and research called “Strange Situation” provides a time-saving and effective way of assessing attachment in children showing that different attachment categories develop under different situations and is also cross-cultural. Main body There are a number of similarities and differences in the approaches of Harry Harlow and Mary Ainsworth in relation to attachment, the bond developed between the child and the mother or the primary care-giver. First, both of them set out to investigate if the young children developed attachment to their primary care-giver based on cupboard love or as Bowlby,J (1979) suggested, if the young children had an inbuilt tendency to become attached to certain warm and soft stimuli. In contrast, whilst Harlow studied the behaviour of rhesus macaques, Ainsworth observed the interaction between human babies and their primary care giver. At first, Harlow observed that the baby monkeys who were separated from their diseased mothers and kept in separate cages on their own, every time the cages were cleaned, these baby monkeys used to cling on to the sanitary pads and protest when the cage cleaners would remove the pads from them. Harlow called this kind of behaviour ‘contact comfort’ and decided to research into monkey attachment, because some of the methods Harlow used were violently abusing and it would be unethical to conduct such experiments with humans. Harlow designed two “dummies” which he called surrogate monkey mothers. One of them was made of wood, covered in layers of sponge rubber first and then covered with towelling material which he called the ‘terry-cloth mother’, it had a hole where a feeding bottle could be placed and a light bulb was placed behind it to provide a bit of warmth. The second one was a structure of wire, adequate for the baby monkey to climb which also had a hole where a feeding bottle could be inserted, but lacked any contact comfort. The baby monkeys would cling to the ‘terry-cloth’ mother and only went to the ‘wire-mother’ to feed, thus showing that they had developed an attachment with the ‘terry-cloth mother’ and only used the wire one to feed. This behaviour suggests that ‘contact comfort’ and a ‘safe base’ are more important than food as far as the formation of attachment is concerned. PI A8054616 This concept of ‘safe base’ is very important in the attachment between mother or primary care giver and child as it provides the child with a safe base to return to when they go out to play or explore or if they feel threatened by something or someone. Harlow carried on researching on baby monkeys as he was now determined to find out if there was anything that would break that bond/attachment and constructed ‘The Iron Maid’ (Blum, 1994). It violently blew pressurised cold air out of its body to throw the baby monkey against the bars of the cage and it would prod the baby monkey to separate it from the Maiden’s body. Harlow noticed that even so the baby monkeys would go back to their abusive surrogate mother and continued to cling to them. These experiments would go on from the time they were born up to three, six, twelve or twenty four months. Harry Harlow’s experiments provided evidence for Bowlby’s claim that young children had a tendency to develop attachment with soft, warm objects that provided comfort, rather than with whoever provided food even if subjected to violent abuse. Although Harlow’s research and experiments done with baby monkeys contributed highly on understanding attachment in human babies based on contact comfort rather than cupboard love, it cannot be concluded because human babies are different from baby monkeys. Harlow’s research and experiments also proved to be very controversial because of the cruel and sadistic way in which some of them were performed. In contrast, Mary Ainsworth (1953) conducted her experiments by observing and collecting data from the interaction between mothers and babies in twenty six Ugandan families for two hours every fifteen days during nine months. Ainsworth found that the more sensitive the mothers were when responding to their baby’s signals, the less the babies cried and the more explorative they would be. Thus, Ainsworth could show that both Harlow’s ‘terry-cloth mothers’ and human mothers not only provided comfort but also a ‘safe base’ for their babies to return to, promoting exploration in the babies. Ainsworth also observed that the babies from less sensitive mothers cried more, were very clingy and, seemed to be insecure too. When Ainsworth performed a similar experiment with mothers and babies in the United States, she had confirmation on the conclusions drawn from the experiment in Uganda: maternal sensitive responsiveness played an important role in promoting confidence and independence in children. Based on these two experiments, which was time-consuming and hard work, Ainsworth developed a way of assessing infant-mother attachment called the Strange Situation. This observational procedure took place in a controlled environment thus making it less time-consuming and more practical. The Strange Situation consists of seven consecutive episodes of three minutes each, (but if the child became too upset or distressed during the mother’s absence, the mother would return to the child before the three minutes was up) involving a child (aged between twelve and twenty four months), the mother of the child and a stranger and is based in a sequence of separations and reunions. Ainsworth, through the Strange Situation was able to assess different types of infant-mother attachment, and went on explaining that secure children would explore the room when the mother was present, would cry if the mother left the room but would be easily comforted when the mother came back into the room. Ainsworth and Bell (1970) classified this group of children, which were a total of 70 per cent, as secure. Then they classified 15 per cent as anxious-resistant, these children, PI A8054616 in the absence of the mother, would not attempt to explore the room, they were upset when the mother left the room and they behaved in an unsettled way when the mother came back, they would not want the mother to hug or to pick them up, sometimes even striking out at the mother. The final 15 per cent of the children appeared to be indifferent and would scold the mother upon her return to the room; these children were classified as anxious-avoidant. The problem with the Strange Situation experiment is that the child being observed might not be feeling well or might have had a bad night’s sleep or could even be used of being in a situation similar to the one in the experiment, thus being put in a wrong category. Harlow and Ainsworth’s researches suggest that contact comfort and sensitive responsiveness of mothers or primary care givers respectively, seem to be more important in the formation of attachment in early life than the provision of food (cupboard love). Both pieces of research also showed that the ‘terry-cloth mother’ and sensitive mothers or sensitive primary care givers provided a safe base for the babies to return to if they felt threatened or when they went out to play and/or to explore. Ainsworth’s work being done with human babies and their mothers or primary care givers, actually studied attachment from the early stages of human babies’ life and showed that there are different kinds of attachment. Both Harlow and Ainsworth used observations in false, created situations except when Ainsworth actually went to the babies’ houses thus observing them in their own environment. Conclusion Although Harlow’s work being over generalized and not teaching anything about humans, it helped understand attachment and it changed the way society viewed the relationship between children and their mothers or primary care givers. Furthermore, Harlow’s controversial experiments when it violated the animals’ welfare, contributed to changes in view of protecting the well-being of animals used in psychological research which became strictly regulated by the British Psychological Society. Whereas ethically speaking the work of Harry Harlow was highly criticized, Mary Ainsworth’s research was acceptable as the babies’ well-being was always taken into consideration. After Ainsworth’s research work, attachment can never be considered as simple as cupboard love or sensitive responsiveness from mothers or from primary care givers, attachment is much more complex and multi-factored (viewed as flexible and adaptive). Word count: 1456 (Title included, References and sub-titles not included) Discovering Psychology, Milton Keynes, The Open University, 2010 p. 201-222