Harry Harlow - Personal History, Psychological Perspective, and Experiments!
PERSONAL HISTORY: Harry Harlow was an American Psychologist who came up with a new understanding of human behavior and human development by studying the social behaviors of monkeys. Harry was born in Fairfield Iowa in 1905, to his parents Lon and Mabel Israel. As a child Harry had an active imagination and quite often suffered from depression. He grew up in a family with a father as an inventor who didn 't go so far and with a mother who showed no care or love towards him and that is why he decided to study human behavior and development. Near the beginning of his high school education he planned on studying rats, but ended up studying Ethology which is the study of primates because of their closer qualities and behavior to humans. He attended Stanford University where he earned his B.A and Ph.D. After completing university he began a professional career teaching at the University of Wisconsin as a psychologist, and married Clara Mears, a friend of a friend. Harry Harlow passed away in 1981, at the age of 75 and is still known today for his amazing experiments, findings, and studies. PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE: Harry Harlow was an American Psychologist who came up with a new understanding of human behavior and human development studying the social behavior of monkeys. Harry was trying to prove that all people need some kind of social interaction, protection or comfort. He was also trying to prove that any person isolated with none of those conditions would live a different lifestyle then someone who has and it wouldn 't be a good lifestyle. He called it the Universal need for Contact. An example is babies need their mothers for comfort, love, care, and protection. If their mothers were never there, they would grow up improperly, or a more appropriate term socially awkward. Harry 's childhood was a huge influence to his studies and was what helped him that most when it came to studying human behavior. He believed that primates had some of the closest traits to
Bibliography: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Harlow http://www.psy.pdx.edu/PsiCafe/KeyTheorists/Harlow.htm http://allpsych.com/biographies/harlow.html http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/03/21/monkey_love/ Opening Skinner 's Box : Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century - by: Lauren Slater Copyright 2004 by Lauren Slater, Printed in United States of America W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y 10110 �PAGE � �PAGE �5�