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Harry Harlow Quotes

d. 1981 United States

Harry Frederick Harlow (October 31, 1905 – December 6, 1981) was an American psychologist best known for his maternal-separation, dependency needs, and social isolation experiments on rhesus monkeys, which manifested the importance of caregiving and companionship in social and cognitive development.

United States
Psychologists

Random Harry Harlow quote

7 quotes

Because that's how it feels when you're depressed.

In our study of psychopathology, we began as sadists trying to produce abnormality. Today, we are psychiatrists trying to achieve normality and equanimity.

The little we know about love does not transcend simple observation, and the little we write about it has been written better by poets and novelists.

In the first place I have an enormous regard for common sense. Any time we discover some great thing and it contradicts common sense, we better go back to the laboratory and check it.

Not even in our most devious dreams could we have designed a surrogate as evil as these real monkey mothers were.

The only thing I care about is whether a monkey will turn out a property I can publish. I don't have any love for them. Never have. I don't really like animals. I despise cats. I hate dogs. How could you like monkeys?

The effects of 6 months of total social isolation were so devastating and debilitating that we had assumed initially that 12 months of isolation would not produce any additional decrement. This assumption proved to be false; 12 months of isolation almost obliterated the animals socially.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Harry Harlow (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.