11/27/2020
Decluttering The Nomenclature Of Dog Training
There is so much confusion out there about dog training, and the majority of it has to do with human beings projecting and inserting their failings into the lives of dogs. In the case of the words "positive" "negative" "reinforcement" and "punishment", here are the connotations many have associated with those terms.
Positive = Good, moral, desirable.
Negative = Bad, wrong, conflicting, combating, undesirable .
Reinforcement = Supportive, caring, encouraging, going in the direction of fostering progress.
Punishment = Distressful, traumatic, painful. Suppression. Betrayal of trust.
The truth is that operant conditioning (positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, and negative punishment) simply categorizes the different ways our behavior can influence the behavior of others, dogs included.
Here are some examples of how I can use operant conditioning to affect people's behavior on social media. We all likely have done one or more of these things at one point or another, if we are at all active on social media.
If I post something you like and it makes you read more of my posts, congrats, you were trained using positive reinforcement.
If I post something you don't like and it makes you read less of my posts, congrats, you were trained using positive punishment.
If I deleted something you didn't want me to post and it makes you read more of my posts, congrats, you were trained using negative reinforcement.
If I deleted something that you did want me to post and it makes you read less of my posts, congrats, you were trained using negative punishment.
The point is that none of these actions are inherently moral or amoral. I could be posting about giving to a charity or I could be posting about inciting violence, and even those causes themselves could be viewed in different ways by different people. Operant conditioning is just language.
Sometimes we have difficult conversations with people to achieve what we view as a good result. Does the discomfort in the conversation make it abusive? Traumatic? It definitely could be, depending on what we say, how we say it, who we say it to, and our relationship with that person, but the fact that it's uncomfortable doesn't make it wrong.
The analogy I like to use is if you and I are going on a vacation, and we are about to board our flight, and I take my hand and nudge you in the direction of the right gate, I have just used negative reinforcement (I removed - negative - the pressure of my hand and it reinforced your walking to the right gate) to get us to Tahiti.
Pressure doesn't have moral meaning. In fact, if we ended up missing our flight because I didn't pressure you in the direction of our gate, you would probably not be comforted by the fact that I only use positive reinforcement in my interactions with you.
Even if I had used language to pressure you in the direction of the right gate, and it required me to raise my voice and say "wrong gate!" it might very well be briefly jarring and startling for you. This would be an example of positive punishment (positive = I added my loud voice, punishment = you stopped going to the wrong gate). Again, it is doubtful had we missed our flight that you would be comforted to know that there was no punishment used in our walking through the airport.
You might even respond to that situation by offering me some positive punishment of your own. And I wouldn't blame you.
Same thing with dogs. If I'm walking my dog to the beach, and I don't nudge him in the right direction using some leash pressure, and instead we just walk in a random path not requiring any amount of leash pressure and return home, my dogs will literally s**t on my chest in the middle of the night if I told him that he missed out on going to the beach because I wanted him to have a totally pressure free experience. Right on my chest.
I want you to be able to go to Tahiti, and I want to be able to sleep through the night without fear of becoming a human potty bag, and so I use pressure and correction in my relationships in concert with rewards to be the best travel buddy and dog dad I can be.
Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.
