Psychology2016

334 CHAPTER 8

self-concept
the image of oneself that develoRs
from interactions with imRortant
significant ReoRle in oneos life.

The results? Regardless of which surrogate was feed-

ing them, all of the infant monkeys spent significantly more

time with the soft, cloth-covered surrogate. In fact, all mon-

keys spent very little time with the wire surrogate, even if

this was the one with the bottle. Harlow and his colleagues

concluded that “contact comfort was an important basic

affectional or love variable” (Harlow, 1958, p. 574).

Harlow’s work represents one of the earliest inves-

tigations into the importance of touch in the attach-

ment process and remains an important study in human

development.

Questions for Further Discussion

1. Even though the cloth surrogate was warm and soft
   and seemed to provide contact comfort, do you think
   that the monkeys raised in this way would behave nor-
   mally when placed into contact with other monkeys?
   How might they react?


2. What might be the implications of Harlow’s work for
   human mothers who feed their infants with bottles
   rather than breastfeeding?

The wire surrogate “mother”

provides the food for this

infant rhesus monkey. But

the infant spends all its time

with the soft, cloth-covered

surrogate. According to

Harlow, this demonstrates the

importance of contact comfort

in attachment.

WHO AM I?: THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SELF-CONCEPT Infants begin life without

understanding that they are separate from their surroundings and also from the other

people in their social world. The self-concept is the image you have of yourself, and it

is based on your interactions with the important people in your life. As infants expe-

rience the world around them, they slowly learn to separate “me” from both physical

surroundings and the other people in their world.

One way to demonstrate a child’s growing awareness of self is known as the rouge

test. A spot of red rouge or lipstick is put on the end of the child’s nose and the child is

then placed in front of a mirror. Infants from about 6 months to a little over a year will

reach out to touch the image of the baby in the mirror, reacting as if to another child

(Amsterdam, 1972; Courage & Howe, 2002). In fact, some infants crawl or walk to the

other side of the mirror to look for the “other.” But at about 15 to 18 months of age, the

infant begins to touch his or her own nose when seeing the image in the mirror, indicat-

ing an awareness that the image in the mirror is the infant’s own (Nielsen et al., 2006). As

the child grows, the self-concept grows to include gender (“I’m a boy” or “I’m a girl”),

physical appearances (“I have brown hair and blue eyes”), and in middle childhood, per-

sonality traits and group memberships (Stipek et al., 1990).

I’ve heard that you shouldn’t pick a baby up every time it cries—

that if you do, it might spoil the baby.

ERIKSON’S THEORY Unfortunately, a lot of people have not only heard this advice but

also acted on it by frequently ignoring an infant’s crying, which turns out to be a very

bad thing for babies. When a baby under 6 months of age cries, it is an instinctive reac-

tion meant to get the caregiver to tend to the baby’s needs—hunger, thirst, pain, and even

loneliness. Research has shown that babies whose cries are tended to consistently (that

is, the infant is fed when hungry, changed when wet, and so on) in the early months are

more securely attached at age 1 than those infants whose caregivers frequently allow the

infants to cry when there is a need for attention—hunger, pain, or wetness, for example