Originally published at:
http://www.thelogicgirl.com


The book "What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage", which was published earlier this year, came about as a result of a 2006 New York Times article, "What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage" by writer and journalist Amy Sutherland. The premise of the article, which was that people could be trained to exhibit the behaviour you wanted in the way animals were by their trainers, generated a lot of interest and consequently was the most emailed NYT article that year.

People either loved it, or hated it. Sutherland's premise was essentially treating human beings as animals. Some people accused her of belittling men. But she did not shy away from that accusation - indeed she writes that human beings are "human animals" with our own codes of habit and territorial needs. After the controversy around her article died down, Sutherland walked away with a movie and a book deal. This book, published in 2008, expands on the idea she wrote about in the NYT article, that is, we can use basic animal training techniques on people to achieve the behaviour we want from them. Simple enough.

I remember reading the article that year, laughing aloud as Sutherland described being irritated with certain aspects of her husband's behaviour - like when he hovered around her, talking to her about this and that while she was in the kitchen trying to cook, his sudden deafness when she wanted something done, him leaving dirty clothes and used tissues on the floor, and keeping her waiting at airports and restaurants because he lost track of the time, and so on.

While the behaviour was not something serious enough to warrant divorce, it did dull the love Sutherland had for her husband. So she resorted to nagging to correct her husband's behaviour, but it only made things worse - he drove faster when she wanted him to slow down, and he did not pick up his dirty clothes from the bathroom floor when she asked him to. Rebellion was on hand.

That certainly striked a note with me - who amongst us, females, have not had to deal with variations of this seemingly inconsiderate behaviour from our male companions. So it intrigued me enough to read the book, hoping for an elaboration of the training tactics she had talked about in the article so that I could utilise myself!

The book does expand on this with a light-hearted approach written in an easy narrative style. For example, she writes that about positive reinforcement - reward the behaviour you want, and ignore the behaviour you do not want. And to use"approximations," that is, rewarding the small steps toward learning a whole new behavior.

As she puts it "After all, you don't get a sea lion to balance a ball on the end of its nose by nagging. The same goes for the American husband. Back in Maine, I began thanking Scott if he threw one dirty shirt into the hamper. If he threw in two, I'd kiss him. Meanwhile, I would step over any soiled clothes on the floor without one sharp word, though I did sometimes kick them under the bed. But as he basked in my appreciation, the piles became smaller".

In the animal training world, when an animal does something wrong, the trainer will not respond. He stands still, and is careful not to look at the animal, and then he returns to work. Any response, positive or negative, fuels a behavior. So if a behavior provokes no response, it typically dies away. This is called the least reinforcing syndrome (LRS)

Incredible, but does it actually work on humans?

Sutherland writes that she discovered in the process of using the techniques that she has to examine her own behaviour and reactions to her husband, and the people around her. What was she doing that contributed to the exhibition of the unwanted behaviour in others? Animal trainers begin with the premise that it is "not the animal's fault" - Sutherland accepts this as well, as begins to accept that her husband's behaviour was not his fault. She managed to separate the unwanted behaviour her husband produced from the man that was her husband and whom she loved. That way, she manages to tackle the behaviour and not the man.

In the end, this book does not come up with a magical technique to "train" others, but rather, it tells us that we have to modify our reactions to unwanted behaviour, and it doing so, it help us minimize conflicts with our loved ones. And by rewarding the desirable behaviour, we ensure that we get more of it in the future.

The premise will keep you thinking beyond the finish of the book.

Further Recommended Readings in this area: