This podcast explores a common canine-related prejudice that pops up in general conversation and also one which sometimes occurs in conversations among behavioral professionals. When I finished recording it, I started to think about the self-fulfilling prophecy in animals.
More specifically, do our prejudices about animals cause them to behave in a way that supports those prejudices, be those prejudices good or bad? It seems to me that this is a very real possibility, at least in some human-animal combinations. We already know that our fear and confidence can cause animals to behave in a complementary manner. It doesn’t seem like such a big sensory and neurological leap from that to the ability to perceive our expectations that they would behave in a certain way. Something else to ponder in the days ahead…
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