The infant monkeys in some experiments were separated from their real mothers and then raised by “wire” mothers. One of the surrogate mothers was made purely of wire. While it provided food, it offered no softness or comfort. The other surrogate mother was made of wire and cloth, offering some degree of comfort to the infant monkeys. Harlow found that while the monkeys would go to the wire mother for nourishment, they preferred the soft, cloth mother for comfort. Some of Harlow’s experiments involved isolating the young monkey in what he termed a “pit of despair.” This was essentially an isolation chamber. Young monkeys were placed in the isolation chambers for as long as 10 weeks. Other monkeys were isolated for as long as a year. Within just a few days, the infant monkeys would begin huddling in the corner of the chamber, remaining motionless. Harlow’s distressing research resulted in monkeys with severe emotional and social disturbances. They lacked social skills and were unable to play with other monkeys. They were also incapable of normal sexual behavior, so Harlow devised yet another horrifying device, which he referred to as a “rape rack.” The isolated monkeys were tied down in a mating position to be bred. Not surprisingly, the isolated monkeys also ended up being incapable of taking care of their offspring, neglecting and abusing their young. Harlow’s experiments were finally halted in 1985 when the American Psychological Association passed rules regarding treating people and animals in research. Social psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a series of experiments to explore the nature of obedience. Milgram’s premise was that people would often go to great and sometimes dangerous, or even immoral, lengths to obey an authority figure. In Milgram’s experiment, subjects were ordered to deliver increasingly strong electrical shocks to another person. While the person in question was simply an actor who was pretending, the subjects themselves fully believed that the other person was actually being shocked. The voltage levels started out at 30 volts and increased in 15-volt increments up to a maximum of 450 volts. The switches were also labeled with phrases including “slight shock,” “medium shock,” and “danger: severe shock.” The maximum shock level was simply labeled with an ominous “XXX.“ The results of the experiment were nothing short of astonishing. Many participants were willing to deliver the maximum level of shock, even when the person pretending to be shocked was begging to be released or complaining of a heart condition. The researchers attempted to make a realistic situation, even “arresting” the prisoners and bringing them into the mock prison. Prisoners were placed in uniforms, while the guards were told that they needed to maintain control of the prison without resorting to force or violence. When the prisoners began to ignore orders, the guards began to utilize tactics that included humiliation and solitary confinement to punish and control the prisoners. While the experiment was originally scheduled to last two full weeks it had to be halted after just six days. Why? Because the prison guards had started abusing their authority and were treating the prisoners cruelly. The prisoners, on the other hand, started to display signs of anxiety and emotional distress. It wasn’t until a graduate student (and Zimbardo’s future wife) Christina Maslach visited the mock prison that it became clear that the situation was out of control and had gone too far. Maslach was appalled at what was going on and voiced her distress. Zimbardo then decided to call off the experiment. Obviously, this type of experiment is considered very controversial today. Frightening an infant and purposely conditioning the child to be afraid is clearly unethical. As the story goes, the boy and his mother moved away before Watson and Rayner were able to decondition the child, so many people have wondered if there might be a man out there with a mysterious fear of furry white objects. Some researchers have suggested that the boy at the center of the study was actually a child named Douglas Meritte. These researchers believe that the child was not the healthy boy Watson described, but actually a cognitively impaired boy who ended up dying of hydrocephalus when he was just six years old. If this is true, it makes Watson’s study even more disturbing and controversial. However, more recent evidence suggests that the real Little Albert was actually a boy named William Albert Barger. When initially placed in a shuttle box in which one side was electrified, the dogs would quickly jump over a low barrier to escape the shocks. Next, the dogs were strapped into a harness where the shocks were unavoidable. After being conditioned to expect a shock that they could not escape, the dogs were once again placed in the shuttlebox. Instead of jumping over the low barrier to escape, the dogs made no efforts to escape the box. Instead, they simply lay down, whined and whimpered. Since they had previously learned that no escape was possible, they made no effort to change their circumstances. The researchers called this behavior learned helplessness. Seligman’s work is considered controversial because of the mistreating the animals involved in the study.
