Guest Post: Clever Hans by Dino Dogan

You know by now that I love reading and writing about science almost as much as I like playing the sceptic. Dino Dogan of Dogan Dogs Video Blogs has generously written an excellent guest post about an early case of animal behavior communication and woo-busting that teaches us an important lesson about the messages we send to our dogs — whether we intend to or not.

Few people realize that Albert Einstein almost lost his distinction as the “Person” of the Century to a horse. A very clever horse.

Wilhelm von Osten was a retired school teacher who in 1891 claimed that his stallion whom he called Clever Hans could answer questions about current events, mathematics and a host of other topics by tapping the ground with his hooved foreleg.

For instance, when Osten would ask Clever Hans to add 3 + 5, the horse would wait till his master would finish asking the question, tap 8 times, and then stop.

Sometimes instead of asking a question, Osten would write it on a card and hold it up for Clever Hans to read. And the horse seemed to understand written language every bit as well as he understood speech.

Clever Hans didn’t get every question right of course, but he did much better than some of his footed counterparts, and certainly better than anyone else with hooves.

His public performances were so impressive that he soon became the toast of Berlin.

But in 1904, the Director of the Berlin Psychological Institute sent his student Oskar Pfungst to look into the matter more carefully.

Pfungst noticed that Clever Hans was much more likely to give the wrong answer when Osten was standing behind Clever Hans. Or when Osten himself didn’t know the answer to the question the horse had been asked.

In a series of clever experiments, Clever Pfungst was able to show that Clever Hans COULD indeed read. But that what he could read was Osten’s body language.

When Osten bent slightly Hans would start tapping. And when Osten straightened-up, or tilted his head a bit, or faintly raised an eye brow, Clever Hans would stop.

In other words, Osten was signaling Clever Hans to start and stop tapping at just the right moment to create the illusion of “horse sense”.

Clever Hans was no genius, but Osten was no fraud.

Indeed, Osten had spend years patiently talking to his horse about mathematics, the world affairs, and he was genuinely shocked and dismayed to learn that he’d been fooling himself as well as everyone else.

This section was liberally pilfered from the most excellent work on human cognition written by Daniel Gilbert in his book Stumbling on Happiness (Amazon Affiliate link) A MUST READ!!!

What does it have to do with dog training?

It serves to show that we are always communicating volumes without realizing it.

Osten didn’t realize his body language was instructing Clever Hans when to start and stop tapping, and we often don’t realize what signals we send to our canines, friends, bosses, coworkers, kids, parents, and the rest of the universe.

Now, the rest of the universe may not care to read your signals, but there is at least one person who is carefully studying your every move at all times. Your dog.

What signals are you sending without realizing?