Contact comfort refers to the physical and emotional comfort infants receive from close touch and physical contact with their caregiver. Demonstrated by Harry Harlow's experiments with rhesus monkeys, contact comfort—such as that provided by a soft, cuddly cloth surrogate mother—is a critical component of maternal-infant bonding, outweighing the role of nourishment in healthy psychosocial development.

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Harry Harlow was a researcher who, along with John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, conducted foundational studies on attachment. In the 1950s, he performed a series of experiments on rhesus monkeys to investigate the mother-infant bond. By presenting newborn monkeys with two surrogate mothers—one made of wire that provided milk and another made of soft cloth that did not—Harlow discovered that the monkeys overwhelmingly preferred the cloth mother. They sought the wire mother only for nourishment but spent the majority of their time clinging to the cloth mother for comfort. This led Harlow to conclude that feelings of comfort and security, rather than just nourishment, are the critical components for forming strong maternal-infant bonds, which are essential for healthy psychosocial development.

Harry Harlow

Spielman, R. M., Jenkins, W. J., & Lovett, M. D. (2020, April 22). Psychology (2nd ed.). OpenStax. https://openstax.org/books/psychology-2e/pages/1-introduction

OpenStax Psychology (2nd ed.) Textbook

Harry Harlow's experiments on monkeys, while influential, are now widely considered unethical and cruel. These studies were conducted in the 1950s, prior to the establishment of modern ethical guidelines for animal research, which explains the nature of the procedures used.

Ethical Concerns in Harlow's Monkey Experiments

In the 1950s, Harry Harlow conducted experiments where newborn monkeys were separated from their mothers and presented with two surrogate mothers: a wire mesh monkey that dispensed milk and a soft cloth monkey that did not. The monkeys preferred the soft cloth mother, clinging to her for comfort and only visiting the wire mother to feed. This demonstrated that contact comfort and security, rather than mere nourishment, are critical for maternal-infant bonding.

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