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Harry Harlow Quotes

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. He conducted most of his research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow worked with him for a short period of time.

Harlow's experiments were controversial; they included creating inanimate surrogate mothers for the rhesus infants from wire and wool. Each infant became attached to its particular mother, recognizing its unique face and preferring it above others. Harlow next chose to investigate if the infants had a preference for bare-wire mothers or cloth-covered mothers. For this experiment, he presented the infants with a clothed "mother" and a wire "mother" under two conditions. In one situation, the wire mother held a bottle with food, and the cloth mother held no food. In the other situation, the cloth mother held the bottle, and the wire mother had nothing. Also later in his career, he cultivated infant monkeys in isolation chambers for up to 24 months, from which they emerged intensely disturbed. Some researchers cite the experiments as a factor in the rise of the animal liberation movement in the United States. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Harlow as the 26th most cited psychologist of the 20th century. Wikipedia  

✵ 31. October 1905 – 6. December 1981
Harry Harlow: 9 quotes1 like

Famous Harry Harlow Quotes

“The effects of 6 months of total social isolation were so devastating and debilitating that we had assumed initially that 12 months of isolation would not produce any additional decrement. This assumption proved to be false; 12 months of isolation almost obliterated the animals socially.”

Harry Harlow

"Total social isolation in monkeys," from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America, 1965.

“The little we know about love does not transcend simple observation, and the little we write about it has been written better by poets and novelists.”

Harry Harlow

originally published in &quot;The Nature of Love&quot; https://books.google.ca/books?id=e10mee-djCUC&amp;pg=PA673&amp;lpg=PA673&amp;dq=The+little+we+know+about+love+does+not+transcend+simple+observation&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=p1ez0bTQib&amp;sig=BH1fmd9ZXLJ3h3pDHwIFdchsnnU&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwj04cSaxsTQAhXLx1QKHQ9bAgoQ6AEIJjAB#v=onepage&amp;q=The%20little%20we%20know%20about%20love%20does%20not%20transcend%20simple%20observation&amp;f=false, American Psychologist, volume 13, number 12, December 1958 <br class="br">Context: Love is a wondrous state, deep, tender, and rewarding. Because of its intimate and personal nature it is regarded by some as an improper topic for experimental research. But, whatever our personal feelings may be, our assigned missions as psychologists is to analyze all facets of human and animal behavior into their component variables. So far as love or affection is concerned, psychologists have failed in this mission. The little we know about love does not transcend simple observation, and the little we write about it has been written better by poets and novelists.

“In the first place I have an enormous regard for common sense. Any time we discover some great thing and it contradicts common sense, we better go back to the laboratory and check it.”

Harry Harlow

in interview with Carol Tavris, as cited in Love According To Harry Harlow http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/love-according-to-harry-harlow#.WE2jv33d7cs, t the Association for Psychological Science&#x27;s Observer, by Deborah Blum, January 2012.

“Not even in our most devious dreams could we have designed a surrogate as evil as these real monkey mothers were.”

Harry Harlow

on the parental behavior of monkeys whose social behaviors he had destroyed in their infancy.
as quoted in Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection, by Deborah Blum, Perseus Publishing, 2002

“Apathetic Annie was complacent and serene
Though suffering from paresis,
Consumption and gangrene
But Annie did not really care
Though life was nearly gone
For Annie had a tumor of the diencephalon.”

Harry Harlow

an attempt to describe symptoms in poetry, while studying medicine at Stanford University in 1924 <br class="br">as quoted in Love at Goon Park https://books.google.ca/books?id=obODAAAAQBAJ&amp;pg=PT26&amp;lpg=PT26&amp;dq=%22though+suffering+from+paresis%22&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=KLAHZqLzIR&amp;sig=7U5NnYVatwD7LVa9ot5hrtfh828&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwii-YTTysTQAhWhgVQKHfY3CKEQ6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&amp;q=%22though%20suffering%20from%20paresis%22&amp;f=false, by Deborah Blum.

“Because that's how it feels when you're depressed.”

Harry Harlow

when challenged on the design of his "vertical chamber apparatus".
as quoted in Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection, by Deborah Blum, Perseus Publishing, 2002

“In our study of psychopathology, we began as sadists trying to produce abnormality. Today, we are psychiatrists trying to achieve normality and equanimity.”

Harry Harlow

Harlow, H.F., Harlow, M.K., Suomi, S.J. From thought to therapy: lessons from a primate laboratory. 538-549; American Scientist. vol. 59. no. 5. September–October; 1971.

“The only thing I care about is whether a monkey will turn out a property I can publish. I don't have any love for them. Never have. I don't really like animals. I despise cats. I hate dogs. How could you like monkeys?”

Harry Harlow

Interview with Pittsburgh Press-Roto, 1974. Quoted in Blum, Deborah. The Monkey Wars. Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 92.

“Harry Harlow and his colleagues go on torturing their nonhuman primates decade after decade, invariably proving what we all knew in advance: that social creatures can be destroyed by destroying their social ties.”

Harry Harlow

Wayne C. Booth, Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent, Volume 5, of University of Notre Dame, Ward-Phillips lectures in English language and literature, University of Chicago Press, 1974, p. 114.

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