Why using dog training psychology to train people makes sense | Graeme Hall | TEDxLeamingtonSpa
about an idea although I’m known for
fixing dog behavior and the behavior of
dog owners and what I’m gonna suggest is
that we rip up the rulebook and well use
dog training techniques to retrain
people okay I know that doesn’t sound
entirely politically correct but I’ve
been doing this stuff for quite a while
and it really works so I go all around
the country
I’m fixing dog behavior problems I’ve
worked with about 4,000 dogs so far the
dog father motto is any dog any age any
problem so that means I’ll take on any
case so I do see some quite severe cases
in fact so severe that I found myself in
a hospital operating theatre last year
when I nearly lost the full use of that
hand to fix even extreme problems like
that I used some really simple
psychological techniques that have been
around for about 100 years but they’ve
been largely forgotten I use the same
techniques in the National Health
Service to help nurses and therapists to
get better behavior from the people
around them so you can use this on
anyone so if you’d like to get more of
the behaviors that you’d like less of
the behaviors that you wouldn’t like
from people around you perhaps it’s that
next year then this is the talk for you
so let me tell you a little bit about my
background and I’ve not always been a
professional dog trainer so in fact I
never had a dog of my own until I was
about 40 so for the previous two decades
I’ve been running factories for a living
I left University 1980s with a degree in
Spanish I went off to work for one of
the UK’s top food manufacturers and well
I spent 21 years there working my way up
the corporate ladder so by the time I
jumped out 2008 I had a team of about
200 people so I’d learned how to
motivated people mainly by trial and
error so what I learned was eventually
dogs and people aren’t that different I
got to the stage where I was going to be
a management consultant and then a
chance conversation with the dog trainer
changed my life
dog training to become become my Sunday
morning hobby by the end you see and
this chap said why don’t you be a dog
trainer instead and I thought because
it’s beneath me but I said why is that
and he said because you’re really good
with people
oh I wasn’t expecting that so I said
what about dogs he said he’s quite good
with dogs I said thank you very much
they said you’re really really good with
people and it’s the dog owners not the
dogs that you need to fix so suitably
flattered and I was hook line & sinker
I went often in the time it took me to
drive home I decided that’s what I was
going to do with my life so I went off
to learn as much as I could about dog
psychology which was surely very
different to human psychology or at
least that’s what they were all telling
me so this word kept cropping up a lot
anthropomorphism they loved big words
okay what it means is attribution kind
of human characteristics such as
thoughts and emotions so dogs yeah so
they’d have you believe that dogs are
dogs and humans are humans and never the
twain shall meet
it’s all completely different anything
you’ve ever learned about parenting or
perhaps working with other people that
won’t work with dogs well don’t you
believe them because I’ve spent the last
few years proving to myself they’re
actually humans and dogs we’ve got a lot
in common and there are a few
significant differences too so well yeah
they’ve got four legs for us down
so I decided I need to learn a bit more
so I discovered a little bit of
psychology that really controls how we
all learn by trial and error so this
stuff works with everybody you could try
it with your work colleagues yeah boss
the kids your other half you could try
on the dog works a treat
it’s called Thorndike’s law of effect so
before you go rushing off to Google to
check this out let me give you a little
bit of advice wait till you’re having a
sleepless night because it will send you
to sleep I’ll give you an idea I printed
this from Google just this morning well
from Wikipedia to be precise it says the
law of effect was published by Edward
Thorndike in 1905 so far so good
that’s English it then says it states
that when a stimulus response
Association is established an
instrumental conditioning between the
instrumental response and contextual
stimuli that present the responses
reinforce the stimuli response
Association was the sole responsibility
the occurrence of that behavior there
you go just do that stuff and all your
problems are sold see you then no really
it’s a shame because if you put that
into plain English it’s really easy to
understand and to apply so shall we have
a go at that three rules three rules you
need to understand dead easy rule number
one any behavior that you reward will
increase okay so if you encourage
somebody you’ll get more of that
behavior no rocket science so far yeah
okay rule number two this is the
opposite so if you make a behavior
uncomfortable then you get less of that
behavior it decreases now don’t
misunderstand me here uncomfortable is
not an excuse for abusing and being
nasty and bullying to people or dogs
uncomfortable is just enough that your
subject is saying I didn’t like that
outcome I’d rather do less in future yep
and rule three is about
attention-seeking so attention-seeking
behaviors they’re the ones where
any attention is good attention right so
if you ignore them completely those
behaviors fade away but for today I’d
like to concentrate on rule one rule two
so make you feel good get more of it
make it feel bad get less of it so where
should we place the balance good or bad
well you remember that dog trainer who
got me into this malarkey in the first
place he was a man of few words and on
this subject he used to say all bad is
bad and all good is bad what he meant by
that was all nicey-nicey and no
consequences for bad behavior that’s not
gonna work think of speed cameras we
might not want to admit it but the truth
is they do modify our behavior because
if purely positive works
we’d have police officers hiding behind
bushes all around the country and with
flowers and chocolates waiting for
law-abiding motorists to come fast and
they jump out they don’t do that but all
negative doesn’t work either in fact all
negatives even worse
we’ve got words for feedback that’s 100%
negative we call it nagging or even
bullying and whatever you call it that’s
no way to motivate people and it’s no
way to motivate yourself because lots of
people nag and bullying themselves all
the time to try and get themselves to
behave better perhaps you do so which
way should we focus or perhaps we need a
bit of balance as both well there’s a
kind of universal truth which is
expressed in lots of different ways but
today we could say it like this what you
focus on you get more off well think
about that what you focus on you get
more off so what do you want to focus on
negative or positive make sense
well you can use this to motivate
yourself now this is the bit where I get
to talk about ballroom dancing so if we
got anybody here who’s not a fan of that
TV program you can look away now the
thing is about three years ago just over
I I started ballroom and latin dancing
and started to compete in the national
league so I got myself a partner Lin is
great and more experienced than me so
she gave me a lot of feedback at the
start which was kind of fair enough
because my frame wasn’t very good so let
me explain the frame for a gentleman
looks like this it’s also called the top
line so doesn’t matter what you do you
frame must never move
you must never drop your frame so what
happens is you start off with all good
intention as you start to move you’ve
dropped your frame yeah now here’s the
thing judges in national competitions
they’re not completely stupid not
completely if you’re six foot two and
you drop your frame they’re going to see
that the other side of a ballroom and it
ain’t gonna end well so our first
competition was in Merced Ville in Wales
and I heralded this as our international
debut now unfortunately we didn’t do
very well um in fact we came last so we
came last in ballroom beginners we came
last in letting beginners so so Lin
hatched a plan she said what we’re gonna
do is when you practice in round the
room when you drop your frame I’ll shout
frame and then you can correct yourself
area so she’s making my naughty behavior
uncomfortable in effect naughty boy
right so I’m dancing around the room and
every time I’m dancing we’re getting
frame ah Thank You Lee yeah frame yeah
yeah yeah frame off for goodness sake it
kind of works but not very much so she
changed the attack now I don’t think
she’s been reading Thorndike’s law of
effect but in effect what she did was
she flipped the focus one day we were
dancing around she stopped us in the
middle of a waltz and she said that
was great oh really she said yeah you
didn’t drop your frame once you went all
the way around this hall and you didn’t
drop your frame now to me that feels
great
so when well done thank you good boy so
she’d flipped my focus you see instead
of beating myself up for dropping the
frame had started to focus on patting
myself on the back for keeping it up and
the thing is if you can keep it up all
the way around the whole once what seems
reasonable to aim to keep it up for
twice or three times so these days I’m
glad to report there I can keep up the
frame now just about long enough for us
to get invites to competitions like the
United Kingdom national close
championships so we went back there we
went there back in July and we came away
with two rather large trophies
very much they didn’t clap that much on
the night we in Latin we competed
against 30 of the United Kingdom’s very
best couples in our category and we won
not once but twice so we come a long
long way from mertha CID ville and
that’s the lineup of the seven top
couples in the country um what you focus
on you see friends even if it takes
three years you get more off so well
that’s all very interesting isn’t it but
it probably doesn’t apply to you I mean
I’m guessing that most of you don’t
spend your certainties waltzing around
ballrooms right mmm so let’s give a give
you another example because you can
really apply this to all sorts of things
so you remember I was talking about the
National Health Service and I spoke at a
conference where there were 200
delegates and I invited them to talk
about in pairs something that really
annoyed them some bad behavior that
somebody around them did and off they
went
now what I hadn’t thought of was quite
how much we like to moan the sound was
deafening they enthusiasm had to be seen
to be believed
I couldn’t stop them so when they
eventually did quieten down I got a bit
of control back I I got a great example
from one chap and he said I’m going to
manager who moans all the time he never
never ever phrases it okay he said how
would you change that round then I said
okay well that’s fine but the trick here
is to flip the focus from negative to
positive so you know when you said you
never praises you never it’s not well
yeah all right well maybe those were
very very rare maybe like once or twice
a month but he moans all the time okay
well listen we can focus on learning
about him moaning and I’m pretty sure
that’s going to get us nowhere
oh we can turn it round let’s see if we
can get you more of a behavior you’d
like instead so perhaps we wait until
the next time he praises you and then we
make that feel rewarding to him because
what you focus on you get more often and
he said well that’s ridiculous
which is fair enough he said what praise
him for craziness how’s that gonna work
I’ll show ya that’s gonna work you might
have to wait two weeks but how about
this so he finally a big originally
perhaps phrase is here and you say
excuse me can I say something
and you do comment a lot when we get
things wrong all the time
which is maybe fair enough but I just
wanted to take the time to say thanks
for praising us just now because when
you do that makes a real difference
thank you very much
now if you say that with good humor
you’ll be amazed at the effect that has
because of behavior that’s rewarded
increases that chap is bound to be
thinking I could do more of that so the
thing is sometimes you have to be a bit
crafty about how you apply these rules
but the basics they work every time and
they are any behavior but your reward
always increases a behavior that you
make uncomfortable or ignore decreases
but nagging will only get you so far be
clear about the behaviors you want more
of and the behaviors you want less of
and be careful where you place your
focus because what you focus on you
absolutely without fail ultimately will
get more off you can make this stuff as
complicated or as simple as you like but
take my advice friends make it simple so
simple in fact that even a dog could
understand it thank you
[Applause]
