I imagine that it’s unnerving to hear that a parent should instruct their child with some distance, touching her very little, and as the American Behaviorist John Watson (1928) said, “If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say goodnight.” Chances are, this last bit of advice seems odd to you – perhaps appalling – who would refuse affection to a young child? But then, you are probably, like me, a product of a culture that has since been re-educated by John Bowlby, a British Psychoanalyst, and Harry Harlow, an American Experimentalist (though you may not know it J).

In the early 20th century, Behaviorism was on the rise in Europe and the U.S., as psychology attempted to make its image more “scientific.” John Watson was of the belief that he could make a child into anything by a series of paired associations, also known as classical conditioning. His legacy includes Little Albert, the baby who was trained to fear rats by a pairing of a rat with a loud, alarming sound. He also believed that affection was not necessary in a parent-child relationship, and indeed, it would spoil the child and produce negative effects.

Two researchers, working separately and continents apart, came to be particularly distressed by this approach to psychology and parenting. They developed two separate, yet eventually intersecting, lines of research to combat the approach. The first is John Bowlby, who observed many children in his psychoanalytic practice, including those orphaned after World War II, and began to develop his theory of attachment. He proposed that children who are separated from a primary caregiver (and in his view, the mother specifically) developed social and behavioral problems as a result of the separation. His work, steeped in ethology (the study of natural behavior, with reflection to evolutionary function), pointed strongly to the need for a child to attach to the mother – beginning with physical contact in infancy.

The second person was Harry Harlow, who trained as an experimentalist in animal behavior and performed all of his early research on rats. Once beginning a professorship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he found himself short a rat-research lab and had to think quickly about another test subject. He ended up developing an extensive primate center (Harlow Primate Laboratory) to research rhesus macaques. While breeding a local population of these monkeys on whom he could perform his learning and motivation experiments, the monkeys were isolated from one another to avoid spread of infection. These monkeys, reared without a mother, were then noted as having major difficulties interacting socially with other monkeys when the opportunities arose. His ensuing research ultimately showed that monkeys reared without mothers have severe and lasting deficits to social behavior – indeed, his isolated monkeys could not be rehabilitated despite his efforts to do so.

Meanwhile, there’s Watson whose advice regarding the need to limit parental affection was far reaching – consider Lucille Ball’s character in I Love Lucy, happy to have a son, who was most often tucked away in a crib somewhere as she went about her day. We don’t see Lucy doting over little Ricky and being affectionate. This view was beginning to spread into homes; Watson is notorious for influencing popular American culture of his time.

Why the huge difference in opinion? The easiest answer seems to be bias. All three men produced research that is still influential today, but it also shows their own biases. Bowlby and Harlow were adamant that the prevailing views of the psychological world as influenced by Watson was wrong, and they came to the conclusion that infants (human and monkey) need to have an attachment figure to develop normally. Such advice echoes today with current research.

However, there are also some biases that are starting to be overturned from these scholars. Bowlby was so certain that the infant need attach to the mother, that the father (and extended relatives) was practically washed away with the bathwater. Such a perspective has far-reaching implications – such as a judicial bias to grant parental custody to the mother in case of a divorce, even if the mother is the less desirable parent. Research has since shown that children thrive with more – not fewer – attachment figures, something that is overlooked by biasing the mother as the main figure in the child’s life. Further, anthropological evidence indicates that in most cultures, children interact quite frequently with a plethora of relatives and develop an attachment relationship with each. The idea of “it takes a village to raise a child” is so fundamental, that we really must take notice of it and begin to raise children within this context.

Harlow is rightfully well-remembered for his groundbreaking work on attachment in monkeys, but he hardly referred to the concept as attachment. He was steadfast in his beliefs about love – a word that caused him the rebuke of other scholars at the time. Even today, some psychologists have a hard time with the four-letter-word, asking questions such as – How do we define love, scientifically? How could we possibly measure love? Harlow’s own biased views about love, and his sometimes failed pursuits at finding love in his own life, shaped his own research questions and interpretations. He believed that love first occurs between mother and infant, but barring the failure of that love, people may never learn to love at all. This approach is well supported by current work on adult attachment relationships, which borrow more from Bowlby’s concept of inner working models – that the style of attachment we form with a caregiver provides the style that we form as adults in intimate relationships. However, there is still argument from people studying adult romantic relationships about whether the “love” we experience as parents is the same as the “love” we experience as lovers.

I think it is a mistake of researchers to assume that their work is not biased by underlying assumptions. We all run the same risk of mistaking what we believe should be with what we research as it is. By admitting these biases and values we hold, we can more easily move beyond them to unbiased research. To that end, I freely admit that I don’t believe mothers should raise children alone. I think those that are forced to (or opt to) do so are doing a disservice to themselves and their children. Now, lets see how that has shaped and continues to shape my research…..

So, should a parent cuddle their child or not? Is it a matter of degree rather than absolutes – a little cuddling is good, but otherwise tough love? Before you turn to parenting literature for this, or any question, it is a good idea to consider from where the person offering advice is coming.

Some great resources:

Blum, D. (2002). Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the science of affection. New York: Basic Books.

Bowlby, J. (1958). The nature of the child’s tie to his mother. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 39, 350–373. Available online at: http://garfield.library.upenn.edu/classics1988/A1988N971700001.pdf

Harlow, H. F. (1958). The nature of love. American Psychologist, 13, 673-685. Available online: http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Harlow/love.htm

Hazan, C. & Shaver, P. (1987). Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(3), 511-524.

van der Horst, F. C. P., LeRoy, H. A., & van der Veer, R. (2008). “When strangers meet”: John Bowlby and Harry Harlow on attachment behavior. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 42, 370-388.

Watson, J. B. (1928). Psychological care of infant and child. New York: W. W. Norton.

Every now and then, through life, you run into someone who just amazes you – and who typically amazes everyone else who knows that person. I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely at a point in life where the older I get, the more I realize how little I know and how much others have to offer. If you’re paying any attention, life is humbling. My respect for others deepens each day.

I have several heroes. Through graduate school at the University of New Hampshire, I got to work closely with Becky Warner. Other-oriented behavior (quietly) radiates from Becky all the time. I could not have had a more supportive and helpful mentor. Exemplary. When I moved to Oregon in 1997, I was fortunate to work in the psychology department at Western Oregon University. This was the kindest, funnest, most easygoing, capable, and supportive group I’d ever seen. Years later, this is still true. All the faculty there impressed me deeply. The person I worked most closely with was Vic Savicki. Also an understated person, Vic was capable of teaching 14 classes a year, publishing 5 or so articles a year, sailing the Puget Sound regularly, and always making time for others. With a smile.

Not surprisingly, I also have heroes in the field of evolutionary studies. I stand in awe of pretty much everything that David Sloan Wilson does – and Gordon Gallup, of course, makes Superman look like chump change. Having David and Gordon’s support has been enormous for my own development. These guys are heroes.

Over the past several years, I was extremely fortunate to work closely with Maureen O’Sullivan of the psychology department at the University of San Francisco. Just like Becky, Vic, David, and Gordon, Maureen was simply awe-inspiring in how she worked and in how she treated others. I still remember the day when she and Paul Ekman agreed to contribute a chapter to my first book (on the topic of measuring emotional intelligence). Maureen took the lead on this chapter. Two things stood out for me in working with her on this. First: Wow, she was razor-sharp! You had a question of her, and she was right back in your inbox – usually that same day – with everything you asked for – and more. And, as a plus, everything was delivered with exceptional humor. Second, Maureen and Paul’s chapter in my book turned out to be fantastic. It’s critical of the whole idea of emotional intelligence – but it’s critical in a productive manner. In academia, it’s easy to be critical. And it can be uninteresting, to be honest. Being critical while also being productive and respectful, now that’s something.

As anyone who knows Maureen will vouch for, she was fun to work with. A day with Maureen in the inbox was a good day. I remember a particularly tough week for me – in the span of a few days, I’d learned two depressing facts about my demographic group from the empirical literature. First, once a male gets past 30 (and I was 34 at the time), he tends to be rated as less physically attractive. Second, as a bonus, he also tends to score lower on standard measures of intelligence. Ouch! Looking for sympathy, I shared this news with Maureen – who quickly told me that I might be getting dumber and worse-looking, but that I had a long way to go before reaching the gutter! I needed that! I have that email printed and saved, as evidence in case I need it.

In seeking collaborators for my second edited book (on the topic of mating intelligence, co-edited with Geoffrey Miller), I immediately put Maureen near the top of the list of folks I’d ask to contribute. As luck would have it, Maureen and I had extremely parallel research trajectories. She got her PhD back in the day working with Guilford on the structure of intellect model of intelligence. Her research interests included intelligence, social intelligence, emotional intelligence, evolutionary psychology, deception-detection, and human mating. These are almost precisely my research interests! Maureen quickly agreed to be part of this new book – and she had a chapter based on data from hundreds of young adults on the topic of self and other deception in the context of mating. It turns out there’s lots of deception in the mating domain! Her chapter was fantastic – and it really played a pivotal role in getting the idea of mating intelligence cited in all sorts of media outlets.

Always fast to respond, always helpful, always kind. In a world where these qualities are all rare, Maureen was just unbelievable to work with. She and I had talked generally about future collaborations. Just the thought of future collaborations with Maureen made me happy.

And Maureen embraced evolution fully. Her work on emotion and deception-detection, largely done in collaboration with Paul Ekman, stands as some of the most important evolutionarily informed research in all of psychology. In fact, while many talk about how “new” the whole field of evolutionary psychology is, anyone paying attention knows that Paul and Maureen were doing this stuff for decades. The psychology of deception-detection was shaped by significant evolutionary forces across human phylogeny, and Maureen O’Sullivan knew more about this than did anyone in the world. Maureen was an evolutionary psychologist sine qua none. And she was the world’s leading expert on the topic of “truth wizards” – a highly appropriate topic of study for such an honest and genuine person.

The world of academia (let’s face it!) has its share of stuffiness and ego. In such a world, Maureen was a gem. Zero pretense. Zero arrogance. And a consistent and genuine kindness that made others feel good about themselves. Further, as a native New Yorker, Maureen totally had this “let’s get real” way about her. It’s sort of hard to not appreciate someone with this special constellation of traits.

On May 10 of this year, any possible future collaborations with Maureen came to a halt – as the world lost her to cancer. Maureen was an exemplary teacher, scholar, psychologist, and evolutionist. But more importantly, she was an exemplary person. And she will be missed sorely.

I end with a phrase that doesn’t seep into the evolutionist lexicon very frequently: God Bless you Maureen O’Sullivan.