TESTING LOVES LIMITS... The accounts of animal experimentation documented in the referenced video are, without a doubt, very cruel. Having, myself, experienced similar treatment from other human beings within my lifetime, I have a pretty good understanding of how cruel it is. My question in response to the findings of these experiments, particularly the one involving the puppies, is would they have grown so close and dependent upon the researchers if they had had another option? Upon realizing that they were being emotionally abused with the random kindnesses/punishments, due to experiencing more balanced and reasonable interaction from another source, surely they would have grown much closer to the individual(s) that treated them fairly. They were not given that option. The animals responded to the controlled environment in the most forgiving and reasonable manner that they could because they didnt have a choice but to do so. It was not necessarily the unfair treatment that caused them to become more attached. It was, more so, lack of a better option. As far as they knew, it was in their best interest to behave in a way that would earn the favor of the researchers. What were they supposed to do? Attack them? They probably just assumed that the researchers were mentally ill, so they, according to their innate good nature, put up with the BS because the researchers appeared to need their help and unconditional love and kindness. It definitely was not due to stupidity. It takes a certain level of intelligence to be so patient. Why do you think they give dogs to the sick, the elderly and the blind? Speaking from my own experience with them, dogs can be some of the most patient, forgiving and loving creatures in the world. So, although I still believe they would have responded with a much stronger attachment to a healthier interaction, maybe their reaction to the experimentation wasnt even necessarily that they didnt have any other choice. Its just in their nature to care and be nurturing when they believe someone needs help. Just a thought. This has been bothering me since I saw the video a few days ago, and I couldnt help but to say something about it. The video was supposed to be about kissing, and Im not sure exactly what all the rest of this stuff had to do with it... but whatever. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT (From 6:24): “One explanation for an infant’s love, attachment to their mother, doesn’t involve vision or staring, but instead, food (“the cupboard theory”). The idea is that we love our mothers because as soon as we are born, they are a source of life-sustaining nourishment. But what if that nourishment came, not from a loving mother, but from a scary “wire mother? In the 1950s, Harry Harlow conducted a series of famous but controversial experiments on monkeys at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Harlow’s findings had substantial implications on our understanding of attachment, but by today’s standards, his work would largely be considered unethical. In one of his most famous experiments, Harlow separated young monkeys from their mothers as soon as they were born, and stuck them in cages with two fake mothers. A soft one, wrapped in cloth, that did nothing, and a cold, mechanical mother made of wire that, none the less, did provide food. But despite being a cupboard mother, the young baby monkeys didn’t bond with her. When Harlow or his team scared the baby monkeys with a strange contraption, the monkeys ran and clanged not to their wire source of life sustaining nourishment, but to the soft, cuddly, and otherwise useless cloth mother. This suggested that warmth and comfort was more important than food when it came to nurturing attachment. Harlow also built a rejecting mother,” which used a blast of pressurized air to push baby monkeys away. But instead of finding another source of comfort, these monkeys clung even tighter, at all times, than monkeys raised without rejecting mothers. And this is what blows my mind. The instinct for warmth and comfort in newborn creatures is so strong, it not only resists attempts to frustrate it, but is paradoxically strengthened by it. Eckhard Hess tested this by using electric shocks to discourage ducklings from following the object they were imprinted on, but it only strengthened the behavior, and made them follow more closely than ever before. The fact that a wire mother, or a rejecting mother, or receiving electric shocks for attaching to your mother would cause more attachment, more love, more dependence seems like a paradox, but paradoxes can teach us. As Oscar Wilde put it, “A paradox is the truth, standing on its head to attract attention.” And what gets our attention here is the effect uncertainty can have. In 1955, A. E. Fisher conducted an experiment on puppies. His team separated puppies into three groups. Members of the first group were treated kindly every time they approached a researcher. Members of the second group were punished for approaching the researchers. And puppies in the third group were randomly treated kindly or punished. They grew up never knowing what to expect. Their world was not a world of kindness or punishment, but rather, one of uncertainty. What’s really chilling is that the study found that that group, the third group of puppies, wound up being the most attached to the researchers. The third group loved the researchers the strongest, and was the most dependent upon them. Guy Murchie called this the “polarity principle”: “Stress, including the mental stress of uncertainty, is an ingredient in attachment or love, and perhaps even manifestations of hatred (its polar opposite) somehow enhance love.” Uncertainty, psychologically, can lead to some of the greatest feelings of attachment and dependence. Good things and bad things in our lives often seem random, and out of our control. So it’s no surprise that we often react with blind love and acceptance in the face of an unfair existence, because what else are we supposed to do? We are that third group of puppies. But investigating uncertainty, conquering it, so as to make the best decisions possible, is advantageous. So, over time, life has favored activities that turn uncertainty into knowledge.” (VIDEO: youtu.be/ixQbCXLUUj8?t=6m23s)
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 23:27:53 +0000