An Important Aspect of Human Socialization is The need for “contact comfort” from others. Prof. Tamara Arrington University of Kentucky COM 252.

An Important Aspect of Human Socialization is

The need for “contact comfort” from others.

Prof. Tamara ArringtonUniversity of Kentucky

COM 252

So, the need to touch these are perceptible.

The need is so strong, you feel the need within you.

Need for Contact Comfort:

• These people are touching each other!

• Note their age.• Note their color.• Note the genders.• Does it feel good?


• These people are touching.

• Note their age.• Note their color.• Note the genders.• Does it feel good?


• These people are touching each other.


• These people are touching each other.

• Note their ages.• They are males.• Does it feel good?



• So, what would happen it we did not get enough contact comfort while we were developing our personalities as children?

Harry Harlow 1905-1981

• BA and PhD in psychology from Stanford Univ. (1930)

• 1930 joined faculty Univ. of Wisconsin

• 1931 established Psychology Primate Lab

– A Science Odyssey (1998). http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entires/bharl.html


• “Harlow was intrigued by love.”• He questioned the, then current, theory that

love began as a feeding bond with the mother and applied by extension to other family members.

• In 1957, he began his, now famous, study of rhesus monkeys.

» A Science Odyssey (1998). http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entires/bharl.html

Harry Harlow• Nonhuman primates can offer tremendous insights

into human development.• Of all animals, apes and monkey are the most closely

related to humans behaviorally, anatomically, and physiologically.

• Rhesus monkeys share over 90% of their genes with those of humans.

» Continuing Nursing Education Credit. “The Power of Touch in Labor and Infancy”. (Retrieved 2001, January 30) http://www.eddesign.com/jjsite/introduc.htm

Harry Harlow

• Rhesus monkeys and other primates offer researchers invaluable opportunities to study the longitudinal effects of touch over the course of generations.

• These animals age from birth to maturity (onset of puberty) in 3 or 4 years, instead of 15 to 20 years, as is the case with humans.

» Continuing Nursing Education Credit. “The Power of Touch in Labor and Infancy”. (Retrieved 2001, January 30) http://www.eddesign.com/jjsite/introduc.htm


• He took baby rhesus monkeys from their mothers shortly after birth.

Harry Harlow in his primate lab at the University of Wisconsin, with Rhesus monkeys, in a 1964 photo. (Nina Leen / Timelife Pictures)

Harlow, shown in 1965 with an infant monkey and one of his milk-bearing wire surrogates.


• A surrogate (substitute) mother was given to the baby monkeys

– Harlow, H. “The Nature of Love in Green, C. (2000, March). Classics in the History of Psychology. Toronto, Ontario: York University


• And a wire mother was also provided

• Wire had food• Cloth had no food



• The monkey preferred the cloth mother to the extent that it clung to the cloth mother while eating.


Harlow discovered that baby monkeys deprived of their mothers (left) would transfer their affections to a cloth surrogate. When they needed to eat, they would scamper over to a milk-bearing wire mother, but then quickly return to cuddle with the softer surrogate. (Images courtesy of Harlow Primate Laboratory / University of Wisconsin, Madison)


• RESULTS OF THE EXPERIMENT All the rhesus monkeys raised in isolation were– Fearful– Easily frightened– Did not mate– Those artificially inseminated became abusive

mothers» Schaefer, R.T. (2001). Sociology (7th ed). Boston: McGraw Hill.


• RESULTS OF THE EXPERIMENT cont.• “The infants developed “autistic-

like”syndrome, with grooming, self-clasping, social withdrawal and rocking.”

» The Why Files. (1999). The Science of Mother’s Day. University of Wisconsin, Board of Regents.

» http://whyfiles.org/087mother/4.html


• Harlow used this bear for the fear test. When Harlow put this in the cage with the isolated monkeys, they were afraid.



• The typical response in the fear test was to cling to the cloth mother. (not the wire mother with the food)



• Testing responses to strange objects. A crumpled piece of paper.



• Object response was exploration in presence of cloth mother



• Object response when surrogate mother is removed.



• Another test. • Babies taken from

surrogate mothers and put in box alone with option of different doors to open.

• They responded with great preference for the picture of the cloth mother.


What are the “implications” for humans that can be made?

Can there be similarities?

Implications For The Human Socialization Process

• Parental contact is absolutely critical to infants’ psychosocial well-being. Critical = absolutely necessary….won’t happen without it.

» Continuing Nursing Education Credit. “The Power of Touch in Labor and Infancy”. (Retrieved 2001, Janaury 30). http://www.eddesign.com/jjsite/introduc.htm

We know that in the Human Socialization Process:

• Simple, systematic massage of premature infants can increase their weight by as much as 47%.

• Term infants receiving regular massage gain more weight and develop better sleep patterns.

• Uninterrupted support during women’s labor (both touch & emotional) results in significant decreases in cesarean sections and epidural rates.


We know that in the Human Socialization Process:

• Researchers have long noted a depression-like response by infants to the absence of parental contact.

• Following WW II, Spitz coined the term “anaclitic depression” to describe the clinical response of human infants to prolonged maternal separation.



• Monkey infants who were denied contact – a “secure base” ceased to explore their environments.

• Continuing Nursing Education Credit. “The Power of Touch in Labor and Infancy”. (Retrieved 2001, Janaury 30). http://www.eddesign.com/jjsite/introduc.htm

• Implication: Depression in human children would result in lack of exploration of their environments which has implications for learning


• Longitudinal studies of rhesus monkeys indicate that mother-infant bonding practices are repeated and reinforced from generation to generation.


• Implication: The kind of bonding you received as a child will influence the kind of bonding you would have with a child of your own and they likewise and…on, and on,…and on..


• Touch was more important to monkey infants than anything else they could receive from their mothers or mother surrogate – including food.


• Implication: A father caring for an infant should be just as effective as mother .

• Or, adoptive parents should be just as effective as the biological parent.


• Deficits in early touch contact lead to behavioral and physiological problems that are both short – and long-term.


• Implication: Infant touch deprivation may have lifelong effects on social behaviors.


• As adolescents and adults, rhesus monkeys reared in tactile isolation actively avoided most social contact.


• Could this contribute to social isolation in humans?


• As adolescents and adults, rhesus monkeys reared in tactile isolation tended to be hyper aggressive in the infrequent social interactions, habitually exhibiting behaviors similar to “anger” and “depression”


• Could this be contributing to the many incidents of hyper aggression in the youth today?


• Adolescent and adult rhesus monkeys reared in tactile isolation developed gross abnormalities in sexual behavior.


• Could this be a contributing factor to gross sexual behaviors in humans?


• By reinstating physical contact for touch-derived monkey infants, in some cases, abnormal behaviors can be diminished considerably.


• Could we, give contact comfort to neglected people and reduce their abnormal behaviors.

• Could someone help reduce our abnormal behaviors by giving contact comfort to us?

Mary Carlson

• Mary Carlson, associate professor or neuroscience and psychology at Harvard Medical School says the …infant monkeys develop what she called an “autistic-like” syndrome with grooming, self-clasping, social withdrawal and rocking.

• (1999). The Science of Mother's Day. University of Wisconsin, Board of Regents. http://whyfiles.org/087mother/4.html

Carlson

• Carlson says the theme of Harlow’s work is that “you are not really a monkey unless you were raised in an interactive monkey environment.”

• (1999). The Science of Mother's Day. University of Wisconsin, Board of Regents.

• A major premise of communication: Our Our human behaviors are shaped by the groups to which we belong and the interactions that occur within those groups.

Carlson• If Harlow’s monkey experiment was cruel to

monkeys. What about the human deprivation in Romanian orphanages, where communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu was skeptical of all things touchy-feelie and therefore clamped down on social work and favored policies to raise the birth rate and established institutions for orphans and children whose parents could not care for them.


Carlson

• After Ceausescu was executed in the coup in 1989. The orphanages were opened to a world that saw warehouses for the unwanted.

• The children were in the third to tenth percentile for physical growth, and “grossly delayed” in motor and mental development.

• They rocked and grasped themselves like Harlow’s monkeys, and grew up with weird social values and behaviors.


Carlson

• Chemical analysis showed abnormal cortisol profiles, indicating sever problems with the stress response.

• A study by Carlson of Romanian children in poor-quality day care, had abnormal cortisol during the week, but when returned home for the weekend, it looked closer to normal than when at the day care.


Carlson

• As the orphans aged, many became homeless, with what Carlson calls “clumsy, sad, all inappropriate” social interactions.

• To express affection, one boy might kiss another – on top of the head.

• The youths were smiling and ingratiating and superficially friendly but unable to form permanent attachments.


Carlson

• To Carlson, the Romanian research has another implication. The consistent relationship between poor care and abnormal cortisol raises the question of whats happening to American children in poor day care?


Barry Brazelton

• Q. Is day care good for children?• A. can be. It had better be. It isn’t at present.

Over 60% of children are in child care you or I wouldn’t trust.

An Important Aspect of Human Socialization is The need for “contact comfort” from others. Prof. Tamara Arrington University of Kentucky COM 252.

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