It is not all that uncommon to hear from people about their using tactics like making a loud noise, popping the leash, or taking out the squirt bottle to stop their dog from doing annoying behaviors. Bird owners may wobble their hand when their bird (that is standing on it) puts its head down to nip them, in order to lessen the frequency of bites. It could be their split-second reaction to a problem. They may think that little piece of punishment won’t be too damaging.
The reality is, those strategies can absolutely be damaging to both the animal’s quality of life, to the animal’s relationship with its people and its environment, and its eagerness to learn wanted lessons.
Scientifically speaking, those strategies are Positive Punishment (P+), a consequence that is adding something aversive (to the learner) to the environment immediately after a behavior. P+ has the potential to have so many negative effects on the learner including apathy, fear, anxiety, even aggression. Additionally, P+ does not serve to teach the learner what is acceptable behavior instead and that negative can come to be associated with the teacher. It most certainly does not foster a love for learning as the learning will only work to avoid the possible aversive consequence.
I set out to prove that point earlier this year in my Toast of the Town Toastmasters meeting, where my project was persuasion.
My speech goal was to persuade my audience that it is much more effective, least intrusive, and humane to teach using positive reinforcement strategies instead of positive punishment.
How did I do that?
I asked a fellow Club Board member, Rakel, to be one of my learners. The other learner was our family dog, Sam, who has been taught behaviors using a clicker and other marker training. I wanted there to be an element of surprise so I only told my audience upfront I would be demonstrating two different strategies for teaching and then would have a discussion afterwards of which method was most effective and caused the most attentive student.
Without her knowledge, I first set out to use shaping to teach Rakel to walk behind a table and pick up a pen…with a spray water bottle hidden in a bag. However, instead of watching to reinforce small behavior approximations toward the final behavior as I would normally do, I watched for Rakel’s movement away from the table. When she took a step in the wrong direction, I yelled ‘NO!’, whipped the sprayer out of the bag, and zapped her with it.
After only a few repetitions Rakel moved to the back of the room and would not come near me. The opportunity to teach her what I wanted her to learn was completely gone. She had checked out of the lesson. And kept her distance.
When it was Sam’s turn, I brought him up front, asked him to do different behaviors (time was running short to teach him a new behavior); after which, I clicked and gave him a treat. His tail was wagging, he was focused on me, and he had very quick response time.
Our discussion was an eye opener for my audience.
Rakel, who always bears a smile and is one of the most encouraging and inspiring people I know, told me she would not move back to the front of the room near me because she did not want to risk getting yelled at and squirted. She was worried about that uncertainty. She was not given clarity of what she should do to avoid that negative reaction from me. I later asked her if she would be my demo person again if I asked her, and she told me probably not.
I could have set the room up so that Rakel could not have escaped me but I did not. If I had, as in the case of a dog that is on leash without an opportunity to move away, while skateboards whiz by, to teach the dog to stop barking at skateboards, she may (or may not have) ultimately learned to walk behind the table because she had not choice but to participate. (This is called learned helplessness.) But, at what cost? She would have felt huge anxiety that could have impacted the rest of her day or longer…and definitely her thoughts about being with me.
The differences between the responses of my students to the two different teaching approaches was in stark contrast to each other.
This is an important lesson for everyone – whether you are thinking about changing the behavior of your pet or a person in your life, I hope to persuade you too to reconsider trying to solve your problem by using positive punishment focused only on stopping the unwanted behavior. Yes, you may see behavior modification but at a potential huge cost to the learner…and to the learner’s relationship with the teacher (you).
This is why, rather than focusing on just stopping behavior, I encourage you to think in terms of what you would like for your student to do instead. And teach THAT (in small enough steps so that your pet or person can succeed) with huge value while you are arrangement the environment so as to prevent practice of the unwanted behavior. Remember, behaviors with reinforcement histories are the ones we will see more of.
