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. He's got to eat to live. Oh, he's going back. He's back on the cloth mother and he'll stay on the cloth mother. Actually, this baby spends 17 to 18 hours a day on the cloth mother and less than one hour a day on the wire mother.
We had 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 nervous state.
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. It's 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.
That looks diabolical. That's just the way the baby monkey feels about it. Flashing 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.
Let's find out what his reactions to his mother are when we frighten him. He's scared all right, 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. All right. 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, let's 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. Pssst!
You see the contrast in the behavior? 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 was 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 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.