Food Or Affection: What Is More Important?

You are right - without food we can’t sustain life without which we cannot desire affection. All the more surprising were the results of a study with baby monkeys who had to choose between food and comfort. And no, we cannot conduct these experiments with human babies.

Harry Harlow, an American psychologist conducted experiments between 1957 and 1963 with baby Rhesus monkeys. Soon after birth he separated the baby monkeys from their mothers and then presented them with a choice of two surrogate mothers. One was a bare-wire structure with a food tube and the other was a soft wool-covered structure. Overwhelmingly, the baby monkeys spent their time with the soft touch mother structure. Now, they did go to the bare-wire structure mom to get food from her food tube but quickly returned to the structure that provided physical softness. Did these baby monkeys feel a sense of affection, though? I propose that they did and that the need for affection is as fundamental as the need for food. I don’t believe that human baby needs are significantly different. In fact, I believe that our need for affection is so deep that we are born with it as an instinct which then grows into a thought-rooted feeling.

I propose that the need for affection and its result in belonging is an intrinsic part of our psychological as well as physiological health. How else can we explain that people who are in the self-actualization stage may choose pain and suffering for another person or a cause? I believe that the decision is informed by the knowledge that they can rest in themselves without need of approval by everyone. I believe that this decision can also be informed by their will or need to give to others and find meaningful and deep satisfaction and happiness by doing so. I suggest that it is this comprehension of self-belonging or the want to love and service others that empowers them to choose to belong to an idea. These individuals have psychologically matured so deeply that they can truly exercise their free will, like choosing the satisfaction that comes from giving affection and belonging over other needs.

link: Harlow HF. The nature of love. American Psychologist. 1958;13(12):673-685. doi:10.1037/h0047884