The Company We Keep!

The argument does the rounds among left-liberals on providing a level playing field and the gaps in human progress that occur when there are differential opportunities. While there is merit in this narrative, is it as simple as it sounds or as linear as it is made out to be? Is cognition important? Does heredity play a role?

In 1931, the experimental psychologist Winthrop Niles Kellogg and his wife brought home and adopted not a human baby but a little female chimpanzee. The psychologists planned to raise the chimp, Gua, alongside their little boy, Donald, with no difference. The?Psychological Record?later said that the idea was to see how the environment in which life developed influenced that development. Could a chimp grow up to behave like a human if it was placed in a different environment? An enriched environment? Or even think it was a human and grow up to be so??

Their record over nine months indicates that the chimpanzee initially outperformed the little boy on many parameters. However, it was soon discovered that Gua had hit a cognitive wall, and any amount of training was not getting it to mimic human behaviour. The level playing field narrative needed to succeed but did not. The comparison may be extreme between a human and a chimpanzee, but it provides food for thought. How important is innate intelligence in human development and progress?

After nine months of intense research, the Kellogs called the experiment off and returned Gua to a wildlife park after rehabilitation. The experiment was audacious in thought and scale. The sheer genius is impressive. However, questions remain as to why the Kellogs called off the investigation. Some psychologists point out that while Gua stopped mimicking her little brother after a while, Donald mimicked the chimpanzee in behaviour and language. While the chimp showed no signs of learning human language, her brother Donald had begun imitating Gua's chimp noises. He grunted and barked like his "sister" when he wanted more food and would mimic her behaviours. Donald also began moving on all fours like the chimp and the two would wrestle on the floor like wild animals. The turn of events might have worried his parents. It also shows that we learn from the company we keep. The little humans' superior cognitive skills started to kick in! Placing the cognitively challenged in an enriched environment may yield a different result, could be a myth.

Many years later, aged forty-three, Donald took his own life, while Gua passed away soon after the experiment was ended! The Kellog Experiment is viewed differently by different people, as dark sometimes, but it is intriguing for its sheer creativity. There may be some takeaways for people who place young children together in a closed environment without monitoring the behaviours that they are absorbing by mimicking others. Indeed, there are takeaways for leaders who want their followers to pick up the right attitudes, which consequentially lead to behaviour!

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