HARRY FREDERICK
(ISRAEL) HARLOW
By: Brianna Jones
What’s his family life like?
Hometown: Fairfield, Iowa
D.O.B: October 31,1905
Parents: Alonzo (Lon) Harlow Israel & Mable Rock Israel
Siblings: Robert
Delmer
Hugh
What was his family life like?
Father did a lot of jobs
Mother wasn’t really discussed
At the age of three his brother was diagnosed with Potts disease
Family had to move to New Mexico
They didn’t have much money
Later they returned to Fairfield, Iowa
What Harry was like when he was
younger?
He loved art
Quite a bit of a poet
Competitive
“ Wanted to be famous”
College Life
Reed College in Portland, Oregon
Zoology course
Stanford University in 1924
He started off as an English major but that ended quickly
Influence of Calvin Stone, Walter Miles & Lewis Terman
Animal Behaviorist and Editor of “Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology”
“Moral mentor”
Stanford Binet IQ Test
College Life Cont’d
Dissertation
- On Rats
- Directed by Calvin Stone
Name change
- Harry Frederick Harlow
- Prejudice
First job offer
- University of Wisconsin
Let’s take a break from Harry’s Life to look
at the time era
Illness was prominent
-Keep the children safe
John B. Watson
- No “lovey dovey” stuff around here
Dr. Luther Emmet Holt
- Avoid staying close contact with children
The break continues
Bawkin p.47
- Babies are emotional creatures
Rene Spitz
- Isolation from human touch and affection was destroying the children’s
ability to fight infections
- Love is necessary
Back to Harry Harlow’s Life
University of Wisconsin
- Psychology Department (Low in numbers)
Junior Faculty
- Had a tough time adjusting
- Students kind of made teaching hard for him
Eventually he got some help from one of his graduate students Clara Mears
- Charter member of Terman’s study of gifted children
Harry and Clara
Developed a relationship
Married each other on May 7th, 1932
- Eventually had two children
- Robert ( November 16th, 1939)
- Richard (December 10, 1942)
Someone had to stop working at the University
- In the 1930s majority of the faculty was male
His first experiments
Rat research was all that he knew
But he experimented with other animals as well
- Cats
- Frogs
*Trying to complete experiments at the university was hard because there was no
lab*
His first experiments cont’d
Henry Vilas Zoological Park
Jiggs: Children Games (Putting the right peg into the right hole)
Tommy: Finding food under cups (He had a bad temper)
Abraham Maslow
Harry’s first graduate student
Dissertation
Hierarchy of relationships in primates
The making of 600 N. Park best known as
Goon Park
The wait is over , the university finally offered him an abandoned building
- But there was a catch to having this building
* He needed more space , so he requested to build outside cages* (1932 he
was approved)
He helped some of his students out in their time of need
Where is the love?
Harry was too consumed with his work
He lost sight of what it meant to be a part of a family
Clara filed for divorce on August 14th, 1946
Clara got custody of both children
Moved to Rhode Island
Goon Park Cont’d
The Wisconsin General Test Apparatus
Cube shaped cage used for monkeys to solve puzzles
Monkeys were able to analyze relationships between colors and shapes
Monkeys did so well he wanted to compare them to humans
Worked with Margaret Kuenne (Child Psychologist)
Monkeys and children were about the same
Harry concluded that monkeys shared analytical abilities with humans
I think he found another mate (Margaret
Kuenne)
Researcher
Married each other on February 3, 1948
Eloped
Eventually had two children
Pamela
Jonathan
*They had a working marriage*
* Margaret died in 1971 *
Time for something new
Harry requested to have a new lab
The University gave him an old cheese factory
He recruited students to help him
Harry took interest in the Indian Rhesus Macaques
Cheap
Easy to find
Still the most used
I don’t like this process (Let’s do it my
way)
Harry didn’t like how long it took to get the monkeys
Breeding his own
Didn’t want the babies to get sick from their mothers
Removed right after birth
Raised in nursery
When it was time to mate with other monkeys they didn’t know how to
interact
*The only thing that made them feel comfortable was the cloth that was put into
their cages for comfort*
Contact Comfort Experiment
Wire Mother vs Cloth Mother
Comfort vs Food
Babies prefer cloth mother
Looked to wire mother for food
Cloth mother was their for them when they were scared
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrNBEhzjg8I
Pit of Despair/ Isolation
Vertical Chamber Apparatus
Babies isolated for 6 months -1year
Lifeless
Did not eat
Attacked others due to being timid
Learned helplessness
Coming to a close…
Remarried Clara in 1972
Developed Parkinson's disease
1974 Resigned from University of Wisconsin
Died December 6, 1981
http://psych.wisc.edu/primatelab/primatelabresearch.html
Discussion Questions
1.
What are some of your views on holding animals in captivity for our own
personal gain in finding new discoveries?
2.
Why do you think Harry was so consumed by his work and not his family,
especially since he was conducting experiments on affection?
3.
How do you feel about a replication of this study being done? Is it necessary?