What dog trainers are selling to you as dog training has nothing to do with B.F Skinner, they were never Skinners quadrants. And I’m pretty sure if Skinner seen the state of dog training being blamed on him? He wouldn’t be very happy.
Skinner died in 1990, and his dream was never realized. He knew that humanity was growing up in a punitive society – and look at the outcome. He believed in positive reinforcement – and understood the power of negative reinforcement being applied. He wanted to wake people up to reality and change for the better.
B.F Skinner knew that punishment wasn’t effective. He wrote papers on the negatives of a punitive society, but yet dogs are living in a punitive society. Treats, clickers, prongs, ecollars, muzzles, crates, these are all punitive – things applied.
When your dog is at home and calm, that’s a positive reinforcement for the dog. A calm state is what every animal desires – even humans. When you take your scared dog for a walk, and the dog is scared of everything – then everything is a negative reinforcement to the dog. You removed the dogs positive reinforcement – and that by definition is punishment. according to Skinner. And that treat in your hand is rewarding punishment. Top that off with cortisol – the dogs fight or flight hormone that kicks in during fear states. Cortisol is a cause of addictions – and those treats are forcing the dog to stress eat. That can become an addiction. Does it still sound like dog training or mental abuse of a sentient animal?
Believe it or not, Skinner would tell you that you are not responsible for your behaviours. You’ve operantly conditioned yourself through the good and bad outcomes of your choices. Those consequences positive or negative are what reinforce your behaviour. These are positive and negative reinforcements. Not “have a treat”.
Many people called Skinner crazy, Some communist dictator that wanted full control. and other cause people really didn’t read and understand. Psychology is the study of the mind and behaviour – and Skinner didn’t care about the mind – it was a black box that he didn’t need to shape behaviours. He was concerned about behaviour – and it’s always the animals choice to figure out a solution. The animal had to choose to operantly condition themselves to what Skinner wanted – but the onus was on the animal. Psychology has been taken over by people more interested in feelings and the mind. Psychology has gotten away from behaviour. And there are many out there that are carrying on Skinners work. There are no punishment quadrants, that’s a whole other person – not Skinner. And Positive and Negative reinforcement are not what you think.
It’s hard to accept, but humans are animals and we share our behaviours with other animals. That’s what Skinner was doing in a lab – experimenting on animals in order to understand US – the human animal. He turned starving and underweight pigeons in pathological gamblers in order to understand the mechanism that turns humans into gamblers. Part of “positive reinforcement” is your desire for the good things – the positive consequences that shape YOUR behaviours. But yet, if you buy a lottery ticket and win $10k, that consequence can turn you into a gambler. There is a huge dark side to positive reinforcement – it’s not always positive. Negative reinforcement isn’t always negative.
Skinner also worked with humans using what he learned in a lab. He wasn’t shocking his human clients, he wasn’t treat training them. He worked with aggressive children for example. He was putting the onus on the child to make a choice to be nice or to not be nice – to learn to self manage their behaviours. Calm gets you good things – that’s basic manners and it’s no different for the dog. Hour by hour, good behaviours got tokens, bad behaviour got nothing. Positive and negative consequences, get enough positive and it reinforces the want to do it again and again. That’s how it works. And it’s no different for your dog. Put the onus on the animal to make the choice – the dog needs to make choices. But the dog needs to be calm to make those choices. They aren’t great at making choices when mentally amped up. And that tends to be needs issues.
It has to be the animals choice to shape or change their operant conditioning. The dog needs to choose to change the reinforced reaction to something in the environment around them.
The dark side of negative reinforcement would be the things you don’t want in your life – the things you are going to try to remove. If you are afraid of spiders, then spiders are a negative reinforcement to you. When you see a spider – you are going to fight (aggression) – kill it or throw it outdoors. That is your positive reinforcement – the removal of negative reinforcement. You can flight (avoid) – run away from the spider or have someone remove it. That’s your positive reinforcement too – removing yourself from the negative reinforcement. That’s where fight or flight comes from but there is a third option. That option is become indifferent – make the spider “not a big deal”. Make the choice to overcome the fear – it has to be your choice. And you need someone you can trust to help you make those choices. So does your dog.
The good side of negative reinforcement is that it helps keep us safe and alive – and can make us want to make our world a better place. The commercials with sad dogs in shelters are a negative reinforcement, something we don’t want to see. Choices – you can switch off – or send money in to help. That’s not a bad thing – that is your positive reinforcement. But that commercial was applied “negative reinforcement” and that’s where it gets dangerous for people. It’s forced application of negative reinforcement that forces you to make choices that you don’t want to. Quietly yearning for what you don’t have while dreading losing what you do. For 99% of the population, that’s reality.
When 9/11 happened, it was a huge negative reinforcement on the populations and scared the crap out of people. Please Mr. Government, what do we do? The population was begging for positive reinforcement – the removal of the negative reinforcement. Protect us, keep us from fear. So, the government grew. All these temporary measures to keep the population safe. TSA, NDAA, Patriot Act, Homeland. Temporary measures that sill exist over 20 years later and become worse. I remember people screaming this is tyranny while getting on a plane – but now – people have become indifferent to it. It’s not that big of a deal.
This is getting into the real science of behaviour.
Scare the population with negative reinforcement, wait for their positive reinforcement. Take away rights, and given time, they will become indifferent. We become used to it. This is how slaves are made.
And this is what Skinner wanted the world to know. But people didn’t listen and they still don’t. I’m old enough to carry the stories of Jewish people that survived the Nazi’s in the 30’s and 40’s. Heartbreaking. I remember one old man, he had lost his whole family in the camps of Poland. He said that if he had read Mein Kampf, we probably would know what was coming. I wish people would read Skinner.
There are alot of people in this country that would likely volunteer to get on the train at this point. And that scares me.
I love psychology but dammit, it’s torture watching what it’s doing to society. People fascinate me, I love people’s brains and minds. I like watching the capabilities of the different brains. Can’t prove it, but I always believed that every brain is geared to be good at something – but how many never experience that something?
Hunan beings don’t see themselves as animals anymore, we’ve lost that connection to the animal world.