Which Came First - The Behaviour or the label?
It’s in human nature to classify and categorize things. This allows us to compartmentalize information into easy units which we can store away in our mind. In many ways, this can be a helpful tool when trying to recall memories or information. On the other hand, creating these categories, or labels, can be damaging not only when classifying humans, but also our dogs. Labels can easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy and more often than not, the labels we create for our dogs are often negative. Self fulfilling prophecies are expectations of behaviour placed on humans or animals, which then brings about those exact behaviours. “Aggressive”, “anxious”, “reactive”, “stubborn”, “territorial”, “dominant”, these are frequent labels we assign to our pets which are commonly used to describe negative behaviours. With lesser occurrences you do hear positive labels being assigned to dogs, like “smart”, “friendly”, or “affectionate”. On many occasions though, even these positive labels are given a negative spin. “Too smart”, “high drive”, or “energetic” are all positive things, but can easily be flipped into something not desirable. These labels can be an easy way to describe behaviours, albeit vaguely, but can be very detrimental to our relationship with our dogs.
Labels can be very powerful. One study illustrated the power of labels in relation to mental illness diagnoses. In 1973, David Rosenhan conducted a study called “On Being Sane in Insane Places”. In this study, eight individuals, who had no history of mental illness, visited psychiatric institutions in the hopes to see if mental health professionals could distinguish a person who was psychologically well compared to someone with a mental illness. Participants were told to feign auditory hallucinations during their medical assessment. These auditory hallucinations were described as pronouncing the words “empty”, “hollow”, and “thud”, which suggested some sort of crisis, but no other symptoms were claimed. If the pseudo-patients were admitted, they were instructed to discontinue the hallucinations and report they were feeling well.
All the participants were admitted to the institutions and, although they all presented with the same symptoms, seven were diagnosed as schizophrenic and one as having manic-depressive psychosis. Their hospital stay ranged from 7 to 52 days and when discharged participants were told their diagnosis was in “remission”. Rosenhan saw this as evidence that mental illness is perceived as an irreversible condition, which created a lifelong stigma.
The strength of the label was further seen as no medical staff questioned or identified the pseudo-patients. Rather, other patients questioned the validity of the participants even though both staff and patients witnessed the same behaviours by the pseudo-patients such as taking notes constantly and openly. Medical staff documented the note taking in one participant as “writing behaviour” which they considered pathological.
If the participants weren’t given the label of a mental illness, would their treatment have been the same? Even if staff was not given the diagnosis, does the environment dictate how behaviour is perceived? This is where self fulfilling prophecies come in. If we use behaviour categories to describe our dogs, we may start to see more behaviours which can be attributed to those labels, which we then think confirms the use of the label. We may inadvertently place our dogs in an environment where the likelihood of these behaviours is more likely to be expressed, which then leads to a confirmation bias on the guardian’s part. Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, favour, or interpret behaviour that confirms our beliefs about the label we’ve created.
So how do we combat the use of labels. While labels can be a quick and convenient way to describe behaviour, it is vague and doesn’t truly tell a trainer or individual what the guardian is seeing. Rather, it’s best to see the behaviour as it is with as much detail as possible. What happened prior to the behaviour being witnessed? What does the behaviour look like? What happened after the behaviour occurred? How did the guardian handle the behaviour? Behaviours are made up of subtle nuances which create a much larger picture. Without these nuances we can miss out on the true reason or meaning of a behaviour, which further does our dogs a disservice. Reducing the use of labels keeps our mind open to other possibilities which can explain behaviour.
