Babies come into the world to be loved, cherished and cared for. The young child will depend on the adults for survival skills, and that emotional security to feel safe in your arms at all times. As time goes on the child will also start to pick up the ability to learn from you. Just like the saying “Monkey sees, Monkey do.”
From the moment of birth, the infant will seek the nurturance and love. The infant will then start to respond with an attachment to the primary caregivers. During time the infant will then start to gain attachment towards others as well. However, the attachment that the infant will have for others may not be the same attachment that they have with their primary caregivers, but the attachment will be just as strong to all those who give consistent, loving and a responsive caregiving to the child.
After watching the video of Harlow’s Monkey Experiment it has proven to show how love is just a powerful of a condition, just like hunger and thirst. The feeling to be loved is satisfying because of its affectionate and intimate nature. My friends would always talk about how love is blind or unconditional. From watching this video, it made me understand a little of what love is, in the sense that we have absolutely no control over it, since love is basically chemistry.
In the 1950s a psychologist named Harry Harlow had conducted an experiment on maternal deprivation in rhesus monkeys. This experiments was setup to study the landmarks not only in primatology, but also evolving the science of attachment and loss. Harry Harlow showed that the mother’s love for the infant was more emotional rather than physiological. To conduct the experiment the first step was to separate the infant monkeys apart just a few hours after their mothers had giving birth to them.

Harlow had then arranged for the infant monkeys to be “raised” by two kinds of surrogate. These mothers were both built to have a dispense milk attached to each of them. One of the mothers were made out of a terry cloth, and the other was made by a bare wire mesh.
Harlow’s first observation for this experiment was that for the monkeys who had a choice of which mother they wanted to spend more time with will most likely be clinging to the terry cloth surrogate, however their physical nourishment had came from bottles that were mounted on the bare wire mothers.
Some of the theories were that the attachment was the result of a feeding relationship between the caregiver and the child. However, the experiment had proven otherwise. For example, If the theory was that the nurture were supported, then the infant monkeys would have developed an attachment to the wire surrogate mothers that provided their source of nourishment. The experiment demonstrated that despite providing nourishment, the monkeys would consistently attach themselves to the terry cloth mother that provided no nourishment but comfort instead. This supports the theory of nature; the monkeys were predisposed for attachment to the cloth terry mother regardless of the source of nourishment.
Social observational learning is to observe behaviors of others. Children are really fast learners they seem to catch on pretty quickly. The child will most likely behave by observing and then imitating your actions. Social observational learning is a form that takes place in social learning. This is where model display comes into place, however, you as the model may not intentionally try to instill on a particular behavior. For example, due to your poor parenting the child will remember, observe and then imitate your behavior. Everything you do around the child will most likely reflect on them. Swearing, hitting, or even smoking and other inappropriate behavior are related through your own poor modeling actions. However, in Harlow’s video social observational learning did not occur. The surrogate monkeys did not provide a model for the infant monkeys to observe and imitate. Harlow’s experiment demonstrated attachment to one surrogate monkey as to the other. The attachment to the cloth monkey was reinforced by the demonstration of preference over the wire monkey that provided nourishment and through the demonstration of sudden and frightful external stimuli. By conducting this experiment separating infant monkeys from their surrogate mothers to demonstrate attachment was seen by others as unethical and cruel. However, despite the cruelty and harsh remarks, Harlow’s experiment had uncovered fundamental truths about child development, which heavily influenced the understanding of attachment. I do believe that this experiment demonstrated the powerful effects of love and attachment.

Showing the devastating effects of maternal young rhesus monkeys, Harlow revealed the importance of a mother's love in comparison to source of nourishment for healthy childhood development.