In 1959, the famous American psychologist Harry Harlow questioned the common educational philosophy in the world at that time, so he conducted a very cruel experiment to prove his point.
He separated the newborn baby monkey from its mother and put it in a segregated cage with only two fake mothers, a flannel mother and a wire mother, the baby monkey could get milk from the wire mother and the flannel mother had nothing, out of curiosity, Harry wanted to observe and see how the little monkey behaved towards the two mothers.
After a period of observation, Harry found that the little monkey would only drink milk from the mother tin when he felt hungry, and then return to the arms of the mother flannel after drinking. This aroused Harry's curiosity, and he wondered if the baby monkey would choose the weak-looking flannel mother or the hard wire mother when he felt the danger, and the experiment began again.
Harry began to try to put some ** spiders, toy dogs and the like in the cage, the little monkey would hug the flannel mother when he was frightened, Harry separated the flannel mother from the wire mother, put the little monkey on the side of the wire mother, and found that although the little monkey was very scared, he still didn't like the tin mother just curled up in the corner and looked at the flannel mother.
So Harry came to the conclusion that just giving food is not **, and more warmth and gentle contact will make people feel love. At the end of the experiment, Harry released all the baby monkeys back into the group, but the monkeys were no longer able to fit in, they all developed mental illness, and were very resistant to the opposite sex. This phenomenon once again aroused Harry's curiosity, and he wondered what the attitude of these experimental monkeys was towards their children. In response, Harry designed another experiment.
Because these monkeys are very resistant to the opposite sex, this makes the experiment impossible to go smoothly, but Harry came up with a cruel way, he controlled the female monkey and put the male monkey to forcibly mate, and after successfully giving birth to the baby monkey, Harry began to observe, he found that these little monkeys who had experienced the first experiment had no love for their children at all, and even beat their own children, Harry was curious, why did these monkeys who gave contact and food do this, what went wrong? The third experiment was thus launched.
Harry grabbed some newborn monkeys and quarantined them, but this time he turned Mother Flannel into a moving toy, eliminating Mother Iron, and the baby monkeys could go out and play with the other monkeys for a while every day. Such monkeys grow up to be no different from ordinary monkeys, so Harry came to the final conclusion of the experiment that "love requires contact, play and movement", and Harry believes that as long as these three variables are met, a primate's need for love can be satisfied. At this point, did you think the experiment was over? Harry's experiment wasn't over yet.
He divided some of the newborn monkeys into two groups, the first of which was separated from the mother and did not provide them with any props. The second group provided flannel moms, but they were aggressive flannel moms. After some time, Harry placed Mother Flannel and Mother Wire in the first set of experimental cages and intimidated the baby monkeys, who only showed panic and did not ask for help from any of the fake mothers. These monkeys grow up with the same mental illness as the monkeys in the first experiment.
In the second group of experiments, even though the flannel mother attacked the baby monkey from time to time, the baby monkey always returned to the arms of the flannel mother after the attack.
Through these two sets of experiments, Harry again came to the conclusion that "being separated from the mother for too long will lead to a sense of distrust and irremedial distrust." ”
Harry Harlow exposed the nature of love through such a cruel experiment, which made many families in the world wake up at that time.