Title: Opening Skinner's Box
Author: Lauren Slater
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company (2008)
Summary: In this chapter of Opening Skinner's Box, Slater discusses Harry Harlow's experiments on the various factors involved in love, and how primates respond to surrogate mothers. The thinking at the time was that love was a bond formed between mother and child due to the mother providing milk. However, Harlow was able to show that the primates would choose a soft, terry cloth monkey dummy that provided no milk over a cold steel monkey which did provide milk. His results were originally groundbreaking in the field, but shortly after obtaining notoriety, Harlow was criticized for his questionable ethics. After making headway against this criticism, Harlow was dealt a much more powerful blow. All of the terry-cloth raised monkeys had sever behavioral issues upon reaching adulthood. He would spend years refining his results, attempting to recapture the fame he got for his original findings, with mixed results.
Discussion: Harlow's research was incredibly compelling and interesting, it's a shame that it ended in the catastrophic way that it did. This was one of my favorite chapters of the book so far. I wish that Slater had touched a bit more on the questionable ethics Harlow had. Some of the things he did sounded absolutely gruesome.
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