What follows below is a chapter from my full course Animal Emotions.
To be quite transparent, it’s one of the chapters that has the least practical application when it comes to caring for captive animals, but it is also, hands down, the one chapter in all my online courses that leaves students the most flabbergasted.
And given how the subject of gender identity has become politicized in the last few years, I thought that maybe sharing some very basic facts would be a way to contribute.
Many of the chapters of my Advanced Animal Training course don’t lend themselves to be published as a stand-alone blog posts, since they build on each other.
But the chapter below, discussing the Matching Law, does!
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Matching Law implies that animals (and humans) will do more of the behaviour that leads to the most favoured outcome, but they will keep offering the other, less well reinforced behaviour too, at least sometimes. Matching is affected by reinforcer quality, rate and delay of reinforcement – and response effort.
Is your dog afraid of fireworks? How about thunder?
Keep reading, this blog post contains everything you need to know. This post is updated and all the links are double-checked about twice a year, last on November 29th, 2024 – look for the “revised” signs in the post to find the latest changes.
Is your dog not fearful of fireworks, thunder or other loud noise?
Keep reading anyway. That may change, and you should be prepared.
Updated June 2024
I finally finished reading a book.
It took me three years to read.
Three.
Years.
And it’s not because I’m a slow reader. I plowed through Brandon Sanderson’s 1100-page brick The Way of Kings in less than a day. So why, then, did this particular book take me so long?
Well, before I tell you, let me frame the context.
It’s a book that’s getting a lot of traction amongst animal trainers lately, specifically amongst the behaviour analytic crowd.
The book is called How Emotions Are Made, and it’s by Lisa Feldman Barrett, a professor of Psychology and a neuroscientist. In the book she makes a big, and in many peoples’ eyes, compelling, case of emotions being constructed rather than innate.
So, many behaviour analysts love the book, and I feel like a complete dissenter in that crowd, because while they’re all nodding in agreement, I shake my head thinking that some of the main conclusions in the book are seriously flawed.
We’ll get to my objections in a minute, but let’s start with: what is the central idea behind the Constructed Theory of Emotions?
When I was little, I became mesmerized by Dr Dolittle.
Dr Dolittle could talk to animals. He’d ask them questions, they’d vocalize, he’d nod wisely and translate their chirps, whistles, woofs and meows to plain English, to the astonishment of those present.
It was my all-time favourite movie, when I was nine.
Side-note: the 2,5-hour film from 1967 was broadcast on TV at a time in the evening when I was supposed to go to bed about three-quarters of the way through. So after one hour and 45 minutes, dad said: “time to go to bed, Karolina”.
And I pleaded. Threatened. Screamed.
To no avail; there were to be no exceptions to that bedtime hour. I remember being lead to my room, still protesting loudly. And then I spent several hours having a loud and ugly meltdown alone in my room, way past the time that the film ended, and at some point somewhat triumphantly shrieking at the door: “If only you’d let me watch the whole film I’d be asleep by now!!!”
Updated August 2023
Once upon a time there was a princess.
She was quite furry and partly covered in scales, and also had a beak, and so she was named Animal.
Her last name was Welfare.
Animal Welfare had four fairy godmothers, who all gave her precious gifts.
The fairy godmothers came from different scientific realms, and they were called Applied Ethology, Veterinary Medicine, Affective Neuroscience and Applied Behaviour Analysis – and each of them offered priceless, irreplaceable gifts to Animal Welfare.
And here’s the twist of this fairy tale: