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Transcript Provided by YouTube:
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So you’ve probably seen a little kid react to a sudden bang or a terrifying clown or
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some strange Santa at the mall, right?
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Yeah, not pretty.
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That child probably immediately reached for a parent, looking for comfort, and that same
00:11
kid might freak out if she was separated from her adult of choice, especially is she was
00:17
in an unfamiliar environment.
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It’s called attachment and if you’ve ever seen a clingy kid you know why it’s called
00:22
that.
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They attach.
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For a long time psychologists assumed that this was just an intense innate survival instinct;
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I mean it makes sense that babies would be attached to their food source and bigger kids
00:31
would stick around to the people who helped them survive.
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But in the 1950s American psychologists Harry and Margaret Harlow came along with a barrel
00:38
of monkeys, complicating and illuminating our idea of bonding with caregivers in what
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has to be one of the saddest psychological experiments of all time.
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The Harlow’s were breeding Rhesus macaque monkeys for their research on learning.
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Part of the process involved separating babies from their mothers right after birth, which,
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yeah, pretty cruel already.
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They began noticing that baby monkeys were very attached to the blankets they had in
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their cages, so they set up an experiment.
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They created two artificial mothers.
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One was a bare wire cylinder with a feeding bottle attached; they called that Wire Mother,
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and the other was a cozier cloth and foam wrapped cylinder without a feeding bottle:
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Cloth Mother.
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It took no time at all to see the baby’s preference.
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They overwhelming preferred the comfy cloth mama, clinging to it whenever they seemed
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to be anxious or in need of comfort, and sometimes they fed from the Wire Mother with the baby
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bottle while standing on the cloth one.
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This discovery that attachment wasn’t just about getting breakfast surprised a lot of
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people.
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It turns out that contact and touch are vital to attachment, learning, emotional well-being,
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and psychological development.
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As the brain and mind develop in infants so too do they’re emotions and social behavior.
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Caregivers can greatly influence this development, and most psychologists will tell you that
01:50
how a child is raised early on can have a huge effect on how they view the world, other
01:55
people and themselves, not to mention how they react to stressful situations or sort
02:00
out moral dilemmas.
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I mean, it’s a big complex challenging world out there and wire monkey baby mama just ain’t
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gonna cut it.
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[Intro]
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Touch.
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You can convey all sorts of emotions through touch.
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A hug, a slap, a pat on the back, a poke on the side all convey meaning.
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Babies learn a lot through touch.
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It’s how they feel security and trust.
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You can imagine how all those poor macaques, who were separated not just from their mothers,
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but everyone, grew up to have some social issues as adults.
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That is maybe putting it too mildly.
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Those monkeys showed many signs of being really disturbed, from trouble eating, to rocking
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back and forth in a trance, to even engaging in self-mutilation.
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Most of the macaques used in this study never recovered, and those who were forced into
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pregnancy didn’t know how to care for their own offspring.
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Although the Harlow’s research taught us a lot, it was inhumane and would never pass
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today’s ethical standards.
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Monkeys, like humans, need to be loved.
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And loving touch and care are tremendously important, but familiarity is also key to
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attachment.
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When you’re little, a hug from a stranger is not the same as a hug from your mom or
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your grandma or your dad or your zookeeper or whomever you’re most comfortable and familiar
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with.
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The unfamiliar can cause anxiety.
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And for some critters, all these factors need to come together sooner rather than later.
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Some baby animals experience a critical period in early life when certain things have to
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happen for normal development to occur.
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For ducks and geese, that critical period occurs just after hatching when they accept
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the first moving object they see as their mother.
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This so-called “imprinting process” can be difficult to reverse, which can make things
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a bit awkward if that moving thing is a golden retriever or a person or a beach ball.
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Thankfully, human babies don’t imprint.
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The world would be a lot different and a lot more bizarre if they did.
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Human babies do, however, feel a lot more comfortable around people, things, and settings
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that they’re familiar with.
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They form emotional attachments, but not all attachments are created equal.
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In the 1970’s, American psychologist Mary Ainsworth created the “strange situation”
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experiment to observe children’s different attachment styles.
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She’d put a one-year-old kid and their mom in an unfamiliar room, like a playroom at
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the lab and then observe the child playing with the mother.
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Eventually, the child would encounter something potentially stressful.
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Like, a stranger would come in and interact with the child and then the mom would leave.
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If the kid freaked out, the stranger would try to comfort them.
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And then mom would come back and the stranger would leave.
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Different children responded differently to the strange situation.
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Ainsworth measured and observed 4 different categories of behavior, including separation
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anxiety, the child’s willingness to explore, stranger anxiety, and reunion behavior, or
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how the child reacted when the mom returned, which was what she was particularly interested
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in.
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Ainsworth broke this behavior down into three main attachment styles: secure, insecure avoidant,
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and insecure ambivalent.
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About 70% of her subjects showed secure attachment and could happily explore their new digs and
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interact with the stranger, so long as their mom was nearby.
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If mom left, they might freak out a bit, but they greeted her return in a happy and positive
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way.
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About 15% of the kids demonstrated insecure ambivalent attachment.
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They were afraid of the stranger, cried more and explored less, and had a major freak out
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when mom left, only to act all salty and mad when she returned.
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The last 15% or so showed insecure avoidant attachment.
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They were fine with the stranger, kinda indifferent actually, didn’t cling to mom, didn’t seem
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bothered when she left, showed little interest upon her return.
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Ainsworth observed that sensitive, attentive mothers usually raised securely attached kids,
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whereas less responsive mothers who often ignored their children, or super-anxious mothers
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who obsessed over every little thing, often raised insecurely attached toddlers.
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And then of course, on the extreme, the poor monkeys with their unresponsive, fake moms,
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they became absolutely terrified in unfamiliar situations.
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Attachment is vital.
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It builds the foundation for our sense of basic trust and quite possibly for our adult
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relationships, our motivation to achieve and our willingness to be bold, like that toddler
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playing with new toys in a strange room.
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Given what those messed-up monkeys taught us, it should be no surprise that disruptions
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in attachment can bring a world of pain.
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Babies raised under abuse or extreme neglect are often withdrawn and frightened, and many
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parents who’ve engaged in abusive behavior were abused themselves as children.
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Young kids exposed to extended abuse, trauma, and neglect are at higher risk for psychological
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disorders, health problems, and substance abuse as adults.
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Studies of children raised in understaffed Romanian orphanages, for example, found that
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they scored lower in cognitive tests and were twice as likely to exhibit symptoms of anxiety
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as their counterparts raised in quality foster homes.
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It’s certainly true that some kids can show remarkable resilience, but disrupted attachment
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and care, often further complicated by social and economic marginalization of all kinds,
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can leave life-long scars.
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So if one of infancy’s major social achievements is forming positive attachments, then one
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of the biggest achievements in childhood would have to be achieving a positive sense of self.
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This self-concept, or an understanding and evaluation of who we are, is usually pretty
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solid by about the time we turn 12.
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Charles Darwin proposed that our self-awareness begins when we can recognize ourselves in
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a mirror.
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This self-recognition typically doesn’t occur in humans under 15 to 18 months.
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And by the time that tot’s heading to kindergarten, their self-concept is rapidly expanding.
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They probably know their age, hair color, and family name.
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Perhaps they know they’re good at drawing and not so good at tree climbing, and they’re
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noticing the differences and similarities they share with other people.
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Kids with positive self-images are more happy, confident, independent, and sociable.
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So, how can we instill these values and security in kids?
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And how does parenting affect development?
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Whether your parents were aloof or affectionate, strict or lax, and whether they spanked you
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or preferred to talk it out, one model of parenting would probably categorize them into
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one of three major styles, all related to control.
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The authoritarian parent makes rules with consequences and expects you to follow them
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because “I said so!” and tends to not be very warm to their child.
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Whereas the permissive parent often caves to their child’s demands and exerts little
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control over any of the child’s behavior.
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The authoritative parent, meanwhile, seeks to find a balance between the two.
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They are demanding, but always explain the reasons for their rules, and are loving and
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responsive.
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And, of course, research indicates that finding that culturally appropriate sweet-spot between
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too hard and too soft is the best way to go.
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Now, in addition to that growing sense of self, two other important landmarks of childhood
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and adolescence are the ability to discern right from wrong and the formation of individual
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character.
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When those two things combine, they give us morality.
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Last week, we talked about Jean Piaget and his three-tiered model for cognitive development.
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Well, American psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg modified and expanded on that, and blew it
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up into his own three-level theory of moral development, which emphasized the notion that
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our moral reasoning continues to develop throughout our lives.
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Kohlberg outlined his theory by posing a series of moral dilemmas to children, teens, and
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adults, and then analyzing their reasoning behind the judgments.
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One of his most famous questions is known as the Heinz Dilemma.
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A woman is dying of cancer; there’s a special new drug that might save her, but the pharmacist
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wants to make a big profit, so he charges a lot of money for it.
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Her husband, Heinz, can’t afford it and has tried everything, from fundraising to begging
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the pharmacist, to no avail.
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So, he steals the drug.
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Was he wrong?
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Kohlberg was less interested in people’s answers than in the reasoning behind their choice.
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He ended up organizing his subjects’ responses into three basic levels of moral thinking.
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Kohlberg found that if the subject was younger than nine, they were likely in what he called
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the preconventional morality phase.
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In this phase, kids are concerned with self-interest, but they’re also starting to judge people
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individually, based on their needs and point of view.
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So, Heinz needed the medicine, and stealing it best served his needs.
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But in the second phase, in early adolescence, our moral compasses seem to shift, during
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what Kohlberg called the conventional morality phase.
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Here, his subjects put an emphasis on conformity and worry about what would happen to Heinz
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if he was seen as a criminal.
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This phase seems to worry “what would people think?”.
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From adolescence on, Kohlberg believes, some people exist in the postconventional morality
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phase.
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This is a more complex adult morality, when we begin to account for differing values and
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basic rights.
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Laws are important, but some situations, like saving your beloved’s life, might overrule
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them.
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This phase tops out with reasoning based on universal ethical principles and more abstract
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reasoning.
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Heinz was right to steal the medicine because people have a right to live.
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Critics of Kohlberg’s set up question his emphasis on moral thinking rather than moral
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action, arguing that there’s a big difference between reasoning out what you should do and
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actually doing it.
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But one thing’s for sure, what we experience during our first years on this planet, the
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nature and quality of our attachments, our sense of self, and our moral development,
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they all set the stage of our adolescence and adulthood.
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Today, your developing brain learned about Ainsworth’s three styles of secure, insecure
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avoidant, and insecure ambivalent attachment.
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And about authoritarian, permissive, and authoritative parenting styles.
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You also learned about developing self-concept and Kohlberg’s stages of morality.
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Thanks for watching, especially to all of our Subbable subscribers who make Crash Course
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possible.
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To find out how you can become a supporter, just go to subbable.com/crashcourse.
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This episode was written by Kathleen Yale, edited by Blake de Pastino, and our consultant
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is Dr. Ranjit Bhagwat.
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Our director and editor is Nicholas Jenkins.
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The script supervisor is Michael Aranda, who is also our sound designer.
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And the graphics team is Thought Cafe.
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This post was previously published on YouTube.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video.
