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Harry Harlow Personality Theories

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I need assistance with this research on Harry Harlow.

It requires 5 pages about one of the personality theories.

Include information about the theorist, theory development, relate the theory to modern theories and/or applications, and discuss why this theory is important today.

APA format (title page, references, citations, style, etc).

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The expert examines Harry Harlow personality theories.

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As you know, we cannot write the paper for you. That is against BrainMass policy. What we can do is make your life much easier by giving you the information, quotes and sources you need to build a good paper on your own.
I'll give you the Lincoln Logs, you need to build the cabin.

The good news here is that Harry Harlow's is a fairly simple theory to follow.

In reality, he is known for one thing: experiments using monkeys relative to their mothers. He was worried about the nature of love and, more specifically, what causes (and maintains) it.

The set of questions you include seem to imply its significance and relation to other approaches. This is the essential information you need.

Here is his actual paper detailing this:
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Harlow/love.htm

Here is how the experiment worked (it took place in 1958):
A monkey baby was placed in a cage with two fake mothers. The one was made of wire, the other, of soft cloth. The wire fake was equipped with a nipple that gave nourishment, and both were heated with a light bulb to imitate natural warmth. Obviously, the wire fake was far less comfortable than the one covered in soft cloth, but the less comfortable one was the only one that gave nourishment.

Why do this?
The point was to figure a way to decide between two competing claims of attachment. The first claimed that the baby becomes attached to its mother primarily because she gives nourishment. Only secondarily does she provide security, warmth, comfort, etc. The other was that security came first, almost independent of the fact that she also gave nourishment. The first is called the 'drive reduction' theory, the second, the 'attachment' theory.

Harlow, it is argued, proved the attachment theory correct.

We should note in addition that two control groups were set up. The first were cages with ONLY the nursing wire mother, while the second group were ONLY equipped with the cloth mother. Here, the nutrients given were exactly the same.

Harlow wrote in his famed paper:

"We were not surprised to discover that contact comfort was an important basic affectional or love variable, but we did not expect it to overshadow so completely the variable of nursing; indeed, the disparity is so great as to suggest that the primary function of nursing as an affectional variable is that of insuring frequent and intimate body contact of the infant with the mother. Certainly, man cannot live by milk alone. Love is an emotion that does not need to be bottle- or spoon-fed, and we may be sure that there is nothing to be gained by giving lip service to love."

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