The Science Behind Being "Touchy Feely"

Hard to believe, but up until the 1950s the following was the prevailing wisdom when it came to the proper way to raise infants and young children (as characterized by the author Deborah Blum):

"Nothing could be worse for a child … than being mothered. And being mothered meant being cradled, cuddled, cosseted. It was a recipe for softness, a strategy for undermining strong character. [The child psychologist John Watson] wrote an entire chapter on ‘The Danger of Mother Love,’ in which he warned that obvious affection always produced ‘invalidism’ in a child."

Into this environment stepped Harry Harlow with a then-radical thought: Far from being “dangerous,” love and comfort are essential to a person’s health and well-being.

In her fascinating book Love at Goon Park, Blum traces the life and work of Harlow, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin. Blum recounts Harlow’s most famous experiment, in which a baby monkey was put into an enclosure with two small wire-frame structures that represented two potential “mothers” – one with a bottle of food but no covering and the other with no food but a soft terrycloth cover. According to the scientific thought of the day, the monkey should have become more attached to the uncovered “mother” since that was where it obtained its food.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, the little monkey only visited the wire “mother” during feeding time, preferring to spend the rest of its time clinging fiercely to the cloth “mother.” Harlow’s experiment demonstrated that monkeys (and, according to Harlow, humans too) are driven by a deep inner need for warmth, security, and emotional attachment that transcends even the urge for the basic “stuff” of life.

Harlow’s work (and Harlow himself) remains somewhat controversial. Yet I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to analogize his experiments to the topics of employee engagement and motivation. Recent studies (by the career development and employee engagement organization Career Systems International, as well as others) have repeatedly shown that employees are motivated and engaged in their work primarily by emotional factors such as:

·         A feeling that they’re continually learning, growing, and developing in their careers;

·         A sense of performing meaningful work;

·         A sense of being recognized, valued, and respected;

·         A reliance on great co-workers from whom they can draw support.

Of course, just as Harlow’s monkeys needed to visit the wire “mother” for food, humans have a need for the basic “stuff” of life – and the money it takes to provide it. But as indicated by the research of Harlow’s famous student, Abraham Maslow, it’s the higher-level emotion-based factors beyond the paycheck that really spark people to give that extra effort, to truly commit to a collective goal.

So the next time you hear someone dismissing these emotional components of work as “touchy feely,” you can respond: “Tell that to Harry Harlow.”

(See also my earlier article concerning Dan Ariely’s experiments with research subjects whose work was systematically destroyed before their eyes.)