The term Dog Psychology

Congratulations on your first new thread! Great topic.

Yes, when you brought up the human orientation of the term "psychology" in the other thread, I thought, "good point!"

I think that Skinner and Pavlov make this distinction difficult, since they were psychologists, but much of their experimentation used animals, and they are common names among dog nerds, often evoked when trying to explain what makes animals tick, both the 2 legged and 4 legged kinds.

Good point and I should have made my reply to you in this thread, rather than the other thread.

Part of the reason for creds and scientific process is to provide controls and measures to quantify and qualify results. If result a happens from b 9 or 10 times out ten, b leading to a is nigh onto an established fact and there it will stand unless another repeatable experiment can prove otherwise, or prove an alteration of theory. Einstein and Heisenberg can go and hang themselves. An apple will still fall out of the tree and conk you on the head, so to speak.

A method or theory must have a logical order and reproducable results. Relatively, one method might be judge quicker and maybe more effective. Example, I can set an ice tray outside and wait for January. Or, I can can put the ice tray in the freezer right now, if I want ice sometime soon. Any theory can be subject to change if new evidences contradicts the established theory. To mash evidence that won't fit the old theory or disregard that evidence in favor of the theory is bad science and leads to drastic mistakes. Yet there are some who do that very thing and I'm not just talking dogs. It happens in particle physics, too. To make my point and then I'll swerve back on topic, Einstein was wrong. But many people so wanted to believe his theory that they go through all kinds of legerdemain to keep his theories aloft, even after he proved himself wrong in Quantum Mechanics. They continue to mash and mangle evidence by violating basic logic in analytic geometry in order to make the evidence fit the defunct theory.

This happens in other arenas. And our only recourse is to conduct scientific investigations, free of presumptions and paradigms and to do so in an exacting language that usually requires substantial education. The kind of education that ends up carrying credentials. The credentials serve as a standard to be agreed upon. The testing criteria come from agreed upon standards. That way, the results can be interpreted by anyone familiar with the standards.

No one said it was easy.

Just don't ring a bell or I'll end up salivating.
 

The story about Einstein reminds me of my honours supervisor. He developed a pretty good theory to explain the global distribution of cooperative breeding birds. His theory was very popular and resulted in a lot of studies, but a few years later he began to feel 'increasingly uneasy' about his theory and decided it was wrong and started developing a new one that was hopefully more accurate. When I left, he was still nutting it out, but had the beginnings of a totally different theory. Meanwhile, it would be entirely believable that a scientific battle about his old theory would rage on for years. For all I know, that could be what's happening. It wouldn't suprise me in the least. It says a lot about these kinds of arguments where people follow one person they see as a guru and embrace the original ideas as their own and defend them to the last, even when the guru who came up with the idea has decided it's bollocks and come up with a better one!

On topic, though, I agree that using the term 'dog psychology' is a gimmick. Just like the term 'dog whisperer'. What does it really mean? Well, anything, really, because there is no established definition or field. I think we'd do well to be wary of accepting gimmicky terms into our discussions, because it gives them credence where perhaps there should be none. Perhaps there should, but if that's the case, they should bring credentials into it.

I whisper to my dogs sometimes.[]
 
 I prefer behaviorist as it makes more sense to me. I agree with the OP that since we cannot ever “know” the mind of a dog I am not certain it is really sychology. Although I will admit that the definition states that psychology is the study of mental process and also behavior.
 
  The Einstein story says two things to me, one has already been pointed out in that we should not get so caught up in our defense of someone's theory because of admiration for that person, or because of personal pride to the extent that we are following something clearly proven to be wrong, and the second point would be to always remember that science is not foolproof, what you believe with all your heart today, could be disproven or cast aside tomorrow.

True. Good scientists are the ones that are open to being wrong, like my supervisor who was the first to abandon his own theory. It's when hubris gets in the way of truth and science is more about being right that it's no longer useful. I don't think any scientist believes science is foolproof. That's why they spend most of their lives replicating experiments! []

That's why they spend most of their lives replicating experiments!

 
Exactly. And given that true science is seeking truth and that changes can be made to a theory, or a theory can be dismissed altogether if the evidence supports that necessity, why can't we err on the side of science?
 
And there is not yet a scientific field or definition of "dog psychology" as it is used in the popular press, more specifically, by one person with an admitted lack of education. And that's not a slam. Can we derive at such a definition and would our definition hold water. Could we, in fact, define a new science though you, Corvus, are the only one with the actual academic background for this? Or should it be defined? Or shall it die a withering death in favor simply ascribing behavior to stimulus? Are we then saying that dogs have no psychology and , ergo, no soul?

I think we need to make a distinction between studying "dog behavior" and studies of methods used to modify dog behavior. They are not one and the same. There are a lot of scientific studies of canines behaving, including feral "pariah" dogs, dogs raised in labs, and even a few low-quality studies of et dogs.  
 
There is practically nothing truly scientific available directly comparing the efficacy of different methods of modifying dog behavior.  I and other trainers who have used a variety of methods can tell you stories and offer our opinions, but that's not science. Lots of trainers use methods simply because that's what they've always done, not because it might be the best way.  One of the few studies I've ever heard of compared teaching a recall using pure +R compared to +R plus enforcing the recall with long line. The dogs taught via pure +R took longer to develop a good recall, but in the end they developed much more reliable recalls than the dogs taught with +R plus long line (not sure what that would be, +P, maybe?)
 
 
Studies of operant conditioning on a variety of animals suggest that one need not know anything about the "psychology" of the particular animal or need to know much about the species' natural behavior. All animals seem to follow the same rules of operant conditioning.

 
 
 I agree that  there is not yet a scientific field or definition of "dog psychology" as it is used in the popular press, more specifically, by one person with an admitted lack of education.
 
My concern with leaning heavily on operant conditioning only is what mudpuppy said in their post, there is the suggestion that one need not know or care neither about the mind nor about the species natural behavior. I prefer to consider all of these and keep an open mind than to relay on a method exclusively, to the exclusion of the mind and psyche of the dog.

There are branches of psychology that deal with the way all animals with spinal columns learn, which is why pretty much all psych undergrads at some point have to take Rat Lab where they learn about running rats in mazes and doing learning experiments with rats. Modifying natural behavior (learning) is a field of psychology that is not necissarily only concerned with human beings (though definately the implication of research using non-human animals is that the information gained from it has it's ultimate usefulness in it's applicability to humans).

But the natural behavior of non-human animals is not a field of psychology.

Meanwhile, a PM conversation I had with someone else about the term "psychology" and whether or not it's a science brought up an interesting popular view of psychology: that "psychology" is just another word for "therapy". And of course clinical psych is a branch of psychology but not the only one, and I think this is the misperception that the "Dog Psychology Center" is exploiting. I think most people hear that name and think "A shrink, but for dogs" not "the science of psychology as applied to learning in dogs".

ORIGINAL: houndlove

Meanwhile, a PM conversation I had with someone else about the term "psychology" and whether or not it's a science brought up an interesting popular view of psychology: that "psychology" is just another word for "therapy". And of course clinical psych is a branch of psychology but not the only one, and I think this is the misperception that the "Dog Psychology Center" is exploiting. I think most people hear that name and think "A shrink, but for dogs" not "the science of psychology as applied to learning in dogs".

 
 I agree with the perception. I am not sure I agree that the intention is to exploit.

Maybe not "exploit" but rather "market as". I mean, it is a business, the guy does have a huge media empire, and is quite successful. I'm sure he's got marketing acumen out the yin-yang and probably a team of other talented marketing folks working for him.

When CM's show first aired, I looked up "dog psychology" on the net. On almost every site I found, this term was linked to operant conditioning and most of the conversations were about general operant conditioning principles as they would apply to any animals. There was very little which was dog specific.

But, there were books out there which I'd read that touched on the dog's brain, their emotions, canine language, and how they were "wired" as a social animal. Some of these books are listed in the back of Cesar's Way as recommended reading.

This term is being redefined even as I write this.

Operant conditioning is not dog psychology. It is a separate field of study based on sterile, laboratory studies within a controlled environment. The animal is tested alone. There is no social learning or information being communication from another being, to help that animal succeed. Take the animal out of the "box" into the real world or put another being inside the box, and you have an entirely different experiment.

It's true, within the box it's not the "real" world with all of it's variables, including social dynamics, independant thought, language, sights, sounds, smells, tastes, textures, heat, cold, friend, foe, etc...

Why don't we have wolverines as pets? Why are some people cat people and some people dog people?

I see many fields of study which are an aid to operant or classical conditioning. Understanding a specific animal's mind, instincts, social structure, or language both in their natural habitat or when they live with humans, gives us more pieces to the puzzle which is dog, than the pieces we end up with if all we do is study a solitary animal in a box.

Operant conditioning is not dog psychology. It is a separate field of study based on sterile, laboratory studies within a controlled environment. The animal is tested alone. There is no social learning or information being communication from another being, to help that animal succeed. Take the animal out of the "box" into the real world or put another being inside the box, and you have an entirely different experiment.

I agree that operant conditioning and dog psychology are not synonymous, however, I've always considered psychology a science that is testable - factors can still be isolated and controlled (as with operant conditioning) - and studying dogs in social groups is more anthropolgy for animals (I'm sure there's a real word for it).  To me, studying the behaviors of animals/humans specifically in social groups is something different than psychology.