Samuel Orrin Sewell:
When I was a youngster I spent a good deal of
my summer vacations on my grandparents’ farm. The summer after completing my
undergraduate work, I was eager to visit the country homestead once again. When
I arrived, I discovered that there was a family crisis in progress.
Grandpa’s dog and hunting partner, Shep, had
taken on a bad habit in his old age. Shep had begun breaking into the chicken
coop and eating eggs. Back then the label “egg-sucking dog” was one of the
worst things that could be said of someone in northern Iowa. To our ears it was
a profanity vulgar enough to make women gasp and could easily start a fight if
hurled at another person in anger. Iowa farmers knew there was only one thing
to be done with an egg-sucking dog; You had to shoot it and the sooner the
better.
But Shep and Grandpa were old friends. I had
been with them many times as we flushed up pheasants from Grandpa’s cornfields
after the harvest. Grandpa sure didn’t want to shoot Shep, but he knew it
needed to be done. Once dogs start raiding a chicken coop there is no way to
cure them. No matter how many times you beat the dog and no matter how many
times you patched the latest hole they dug under the wall into the chicken
coop, they doggedly (forgive the pun) keep sticking their noses under hens and
stealing eggs. The “egg money” was Grandma’s private income, so you can imagine
how she felt about the problem.
With the inexperienced confidence of youth
and a brand new “expertise” in the behavioral sciences, I told Grandpa I
thought I could “cure” an egg-sucking dog. After all, I had read all about B.F.
Skinner’s work with dogs and operant conditioning. I wanted to at least have a
chance to save Shep’s life and save Grandpa the seemingly inevitable heartbreaking
chore.
The theory is simple. One observes the
subject animal, in this case Shep, doing something the correct way and then
reinforces the desired behavior. The reinforcement
cycle starts with some action on the part of the trainee, Shep (in Skinner's
language, the operant). Operant conditioning is therefore always dependent upon behavior. So,
we have:
1. Dog does something favorable
(operant behavior.)
2. Dog gets food (positive
reinforcement.)
I knew that these farmers almost
always applied negative stimulus after the behavior had become a habit, thus
reinforcing the very behavior they were attempting to eliminate. Applying
negative stimulus to an already established negative pattern of behavior
reinforces behavior you don’t want. So maybe a different method might work.
There was considerable pressure
to accomplish what I had told Grandpa I could do. That pressure amplified when
Grandpa and I went into town, and Grandpa told the farmers who gathered at the
coffee shop across from the hardware store, “My grandson, the psychologist, is
going to cure Shep so I don’t need to shoot him.” You can imagine the skeptical
attitude of Iowa farmers being told that there was a cure for egg-sucking dogs.
By this time it was too late to tell Grandpa that I had never actually tested
this theory, and that I wasn’t sure it would really work.
When I had confidently and
foolishly announced to Grandpa that I could cure Shep, I didn’t even have a
plan ready. So I began to think: How could I get Shep to not go into the
chicken coop so that I could then reinforce the behavior I wanted?
The next morning I broke open two
fresh eggs and put them in Shep’s bowl right at the door to the chicken coop. Sometimes
in order to begin changing behavior, you need to do something good for the bad
dog. Shep came along and noticed the eggs. I can imagine his dog brain doing
this self-talk: “Eggs. Right here. I don’t even need to eat the shells. And I
don’t have to put up with those hens pecking at the top of my head. This is a
good thing.” He quickly lapped up the eggs and sauntered off for his nap.
The following morning I did the
same thing. I put the eggs a few feet away from the chicken coop toward the
back porch of the farmhouse where Grandma usually fed Shep. The next day I
again moved the bowl closer to the house and added some dog food to the eggs. Every
day I moved the bowl closer to the porch, mixing more dog food and fewer eggs.
By the time the bowl reached the porch, it was all dog food and no eggs. Shep
had again become accustomed to looking for his food at the back porch of the
house, and never again went into the chicken coop. This process is called
incremental desensitization.
Please remember this: If you
reinforce behavior that moves you toward a desired goal, and ignore the old
behavior, you will change. Looking backward will keep you backward. Looking
forward will move you forward.
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