Let me show you a monkey raised on a nursing wire mother
Now here are 106's two mothers As you can see it was weaned on a wire mother
Here's baby 106 Watch
He's going to the wire mother Got to eat to live
He's going back He's back on the cloth mother and he'll stay
on the cloth mother Actually this baby spends 17-18 hours a day
on the cloth mother and less than 1 hour a day on the wire mother
We've predicted that the variable of contact comfort would be a variable of measurable
importance but we were unprepared to find that it completely
overwhelmed and overshadowed all other variables including those of nursing
Frankly doctor if it comes to a choice between wire and cloth it's reasonable to expect that
any child will go to the cloth as a matter of
creature comfort like a baby with its blanket But is this really love?
Well what do you mean by saying that a baby loves its mother?
Certainly one thing we mean is that it gets a great feeling of security in the presence
of the mother now Mr Collingwood, wouldn't you say that
if you frightened a baby that it went running to its mother
was comforted, and then all the fear disappeared and was replaced by a complete sense of security
that that baby loved its mother? Now in this experiment this is the apparatus
we use It looks diabolical
That's just the way the baby monkey feels about it
Blazing eyes, loud sounds, moving mechanical parts
all of these things are designed to frighten a monkey
Now here we have a peaceful, resting baby monkey
Lets find out what his reactions to his mother are
when we frighten him He's scared alright
and he does what any child will do in a similar situation
he runs away it's more than running away
he was running to his mother to touch her to drive away his fear
contact with the mother changes his entire personality
Look, now he's actually threatening the diabolical object
Alright, this gives us part of the picture of the strength of infantile love
This is a six foot square room with a few toys and other objects
but to the monkey it's much more menacing we know that when our own children are taken
to a strange place without their mothers they are often overwhelmed with fear
this room is just such a new and strange environment for the baby monkeys
No mother is in there, now lets put a monkey into the room
Notice how cautiously he enters the room He's searching for comfort but nothing relieves
his disturbance Now we'll take the baby monkey out and put
in a wire mother Now this one was nursed by a wire mother?
That's right, all his life She doesn't seem to help much
Now we'll try the same test with a cloth mother in the room
You see the contrast in the behaviour? Despite the fact that the wire mother nursed
him, she could offer this infant nothing in the way of affection or security
but here the monkey by rubbing against the cloth mother
as if he were seeking as much contact comfort as he could get
builds up his reservoir of affection and security first his body relaxes
as the fear disappears but above and beyond this, new positive response
patterns appear He now goes out to explore and investigate
this new strange world he is now a normal, happy, curious baby