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-Listens to what he means when he is speaking -Pays attention to his nonverbal cues about his emotional state -Respects his boundaries and only assists him in expanding them, not demanding he do so -Rewards him for engaging in new healthy behaviours that he finds uncomfortable
Fellas, is it being an asshole for checks notes engaging with your partner?
Yeah, this person isn’t disrespectfully treating a human as they would a dog, they’re just respectfully treating dogs as they would a human.
We can’t get a dog’s consent to engage in experiments. Continuing with this method after realizing and not talking with him about it would be intentionally ignoring consent.
It’s not an experiment to react to someone’s fear and trauma with kindness, even if you learned those skills through helping rehabilitate dogs. She’s not doing this to try to figure out how he reacts to the stimulus of M&Ms under certain conditions, she’s giving him candy when he’s stressed because she knows it helps him calm down. That’s just being a caring and attentive girlfriend.
I think the concern would be generating a Pavlovian response to her presence instead of genuine desire to be with her, but I don’t even know what that really means because our animal brains aren’t rational. There isn’t a such thing as “genuine” in this context because it’s all based on emotions. Should you not have sex with your partner because it can make them feel attached, for example?
Just hit it from the back so they don’t get attached
People forget that humans are just animals (that can sometimes reason and talk). I still stand that dog training guides make better parenting books than many parenting books. At least up till around 3 years old.
The extension of this to adults is more challenging. Intent matters. This could be used abusively VERY easily. That is not happening here, however. With great power, comes great responsibility.
It’s also worth noting that, if you use this, plan out how you will explain it later. A panicked, “oh shit, (s)he caught on!” will look bad, no matter what. A calm, thoughtful, positive explanation, delivered with confidence will likely get a lot more acceptance.
A: “Ok, what’s with the M&Ms?”
B: “You’ve noticed then. :)”
A: “…”
B: “I noticed chocolate made you happy. I also noticed you were trying to overcome some negative habits. I decided to help. Whenever you put effort in, I rewarded it with a bit of chocolate. It makes you happy, and helps you lock a good habit in better.”
A: “… You’ve been conditioning me?!?”
B: “Yes, don’t you like the improvement?”
A “… yes, but I’m not sure I should…”
B: “M&M?”
Just squirt him with the water bottle if he starts asking questions like this.
Negative reinforcement should be HIGHLY limited. It can cause unforeseen knock on effects. Any negative reinforcement should be highly targeted, without triggering a fight or flight response. It should also be accompanied by clear instructions for how to correct it. This applies to both humans and pets.
It’s quite likely that most of the negative traits in the OP were caused by an attempt at negative reinforcement.
You could also be even more cautious: “I noticed that they cheer you up, so I try to have them on hand for when you’re feeling down.” No mention of conditioning, wholesome, hard to argue against.
We constantly condition each other all the time. It’s a part of human interaction. We don’t usually do it consciously, but it’s conditioning nonetheless. Couples will subtly condition their behavior to be more in tune with each other.
Consider a simple example. Imagine a you’re in a couple, and you just moved in together. You’re both used to living alone. You’re used to flicking on the bedroom light as you walk into the bedroom before bed to prepare for bed. Unfortunately your partner tends to go to sleep before you. You wake them up a few times by accident, and they understandably grumble. You feel bad about it, as you care about them and don’t want to wake them up. You wince the next day when you see how tired they seem. In time, you stop flicking the light on before you enter the room. Your partner’s actions have conditioned you to not turn the light on. Your partner conditioned you without even intending to. We condition each other constantly. We observe what effect our behavior has on others, and we adjust our own behavior accordingly. We usually just don’t refer to it as “conditioning,” as that tends to have a nefarious connotation.
It also hides the conditioning aspect. We hide things when we consider them negative. If they are asking, they have potentially noticed a lot more. If you hide it, you believe it was a bad thing you were doing, and they will react VERY strongly to you doing it.
By being upfront it will derail their train of thought on the matter. I personally used this a few times in my youth. It pulls the teeth of an argument quickly.
Here it is basically acknowledging what you have been doing, while defusing the various “ah ha!” reveals and got-yas they had mentally planned. At that point they have to actually think, rather than just react according to the script they built in their head. Once they are thinking, it’s a lot easier to communicate properly.
I’m very much a “direct communication” kinda person but even I know that timing is important. True it took learning it and that was certainly an experience but it happened.
If the person is feeling vulnerable and a little worried you’re manipulating them and you dive straight in with a scientific, emotionless reduction of “choco make boyo happy” then you’ll probably scare them. You’re excited about this thing and have had a lot of time to explore it but they haven’t had such time to be more comfortable with that kind of wording. You don’t want to derail their argument, that really only protects you and actually puts you back in hiding a negative aspect and that person now feels possibly even more confused and angry. They were probably hoping that it was just a mistake or that you were being nice, which you probably were, and now you’ve taken their “best case scenario” and told them straight-faced that you were consciously manipulating them.
After they feel better, after they’ve had some time to sit with it, sure maybe, but in the moment it’s good to soften it a little.
Some people take great offense when you don’t pretend humans have somehow evolved beyond the animal kingdom. Yes, we are still animals, and much of what works for them still works on us.
I mean this simply gets into the ethics of manipulation. Ultimately, it comes down to choosing happiness.
This is probably a me thing, but if I were to catch on to someone doing this I might start wondering at some hidden intent behind everything they do
This. ^
Most of the time, you can’t tell the persons intentions from that position. I hope for the guy’s sake the woman is genuine about helping him. Though her method is fucked.
I mean, it doesn’t say that she forces him to eat it from her hand or anything.
The biggest thing for me is that she’s eroding his emotional sovereignty. She’s taking covert actions to modulate and decide his mood for him.
Sometimes, when I’m feeling down, I just want to feel that and get through on my own. But she’s deciding which of his moods isn’t appropriate and is changing his behaviour. If this were out in the open, he would be able to accept or refuse her attempts to cheer him up or divert him. But he (presumably) doesn’t even know it’s happening. That’s not cool.
It sounds fine because it’s worded like she’s helping him but she’s still taking away his autonomy. Just bring it out in the open: “hey, I’ve noticed, when you’re sad or stressed, peanut M&Ms cheer you up. Would you like me to keep some on-hand?” With that, you’ve alerted them to behaviours about themself and got their consent to “help” them.
If that’s the timbre of their interactions, I’ve got no qualms. But setting the context as “I train abused dogs” brings the mental image to one step above “hiding medicine in a dog treat.”
I appreciate your comment.
I’ve actually talked to my fiance about things like this, because I noticed that I was ‘handling’ him, and I felt like it was demeaning to him. Luckily for me, he considered what I said and informed me that he likes that.
Consent makes the difference!
Probably helps that I’m used to disturbed and abused humans, too…
Insert “it should’ve been me” meme here.
The way she contextualises it is a bit odd, but the actual thing isn’t that bad. It’s just accommodating him, being aware of his particulars, and helping him over his issues. The gift of a single M&M is unusual, but giving your partner something nice isn’t strange. People do similar things all the time in relationships, it’s just not thought of as training.
Biggest issue is her framing it that way, because people might either get the wrong idea, or give the wrong idea. Saying she’s training him like a dog gives the idea of a lead, like with an actual dog.
Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of people react like the treats are indignifying, as if positive and negative reinforcement only happen in a lab or something.
Yeah, the single m&m is a little weird but how is it really different than seeing someone in a bag mood and telling them a joke or something to lift their spirits?
Pretty sure it’s the lack of consent of the intent that is undignified. Just like many woman prefer to not have their date pay for their meal because it sets the implication that they have to pay via other ways and they didn’t consent to this.
Okay, I asked somebody else, maybe you can help.
Consent to what? What is he supposed to be consenting to? That she thinks thoughts in her head? M&M’s are not actually magic, he does not have to be any happier if he doesn’t want to.
Like, let’s look at another act of subtle coercion: the advertising industry. An ad agency’s entire job is to either directly or indirectly prime and condition you into believing certain things about whatever it is they’re selling.
Maybe they want you to believe it’s a good product. Maybe they want you to believe that Apple is “clean” and “cool” and “for creatives.” Maybe they want you to believe that protesters are crazed lunatics throwing firebombs and flipping cars all the time.
And, while this is deliberate manipulation, I’ve never heard anybody talk about how they didn’t consent to it. If a salesman is trying to coerce you into something, your consent is the contract you sign.
And likewise, I don’t see how this guy isn’t consenting to M&M’s making him happier when they either did or did not do that in the first place.
My main issue with this is that the way we train dogs is that we train them to be dependant on us. So yeah, she’s training him to come out of his shell, maybe, but if it works the same way a dog does he’ll only be loyal and listen to her. Especially because anyone else he meets won’t treat him like a dog and will expect him to behave like a person without the expectation of rewards which would probably make him more adverse to others
Of course, he’s a human being too so it won’t go down exactly like that. I’m just saying that from the very first premise the way we train dogs is by training them to be codependant
Well, once he opens up she can train him to be more independent. But first he needs the security and wiggle room.
Its not the best approach, but in the mental world you take what you can get.
That’s kind of my point. What part of our whole understanding of how to train dogs involves training them to be more independent? I don’t really think there is any. At best you can point to like dog socialization training, but I don’t think that makes them more independent, that’s just training them to be social when their owners are around.
Yeah but this guy doesn’t currently need independence, he needs safety. Independence isn’t gonna give it to him - if anything, it’s making him feel exposed and unsafe.
It’s like kids, they need to be cared for while they learn how to handle themselves. Slowly, you let them go and eventually they spread their wings and fly off. But until then, they’re vulnerable, weak, and highly dependent. Doesn’t make them any less, they just have other priorities.
Someone who always has a snack for me if I’m feeling down?? Sign me the fuck up!
I was like ‘I need a caretaker/trainer’
This is literally how I want to be treated.
If THAT is what counts as “being treated like a dog”, woof woof!
🦴
Honestly if we treated each other as well as we treated dogs we’d already be in paradise.
How close would that be to slavery?
Intent matters, and methods matter. But I think what the friend is missing is that the methods aren’t bad; op is using methods developed from scientific analysis of abused animals with the intent to ethically care for them. Coming back to intent, she clearly wants to help this guy who her training is identifying as having some kind of background of abuse. The methods might be a little crude in the sense that they were developed for animals and not for people (who are animals, but animals with several distinct qualities from other animals, like the ability to communicate complex ideas), and there are different, more well-adapted methods for people, but they’re only crude in comparison to those modern human-focused methods. They’re still quite effective, and I would still consider them ethical for use on humans when paired with an altruistic intent, which she seems to be conveying. As long as she still views the guy as fully a person, a peer, then I see nothing wrong here.
Intent matters, and methods matter.
pretty much agree, it’s not like she’s conditioning him to sounds CLICK-CLICK good boy…
Though there’s probably a significant amount of people on lemmy who would be into actually that.
You can absolutely condition me into doing whatever you want by cracking open a beer next to me
I brought a six pack to a final exam in grad school (take the test in the same state in which you study, right?) and people around me perked up and almost literally started drooling when I cracked the first one.
Edit: no, we engineering students don’t have drinking problems, you have a drinking problem!
Beer isn’t a problem, it’s a complex mixture.
I did accidentaly develop a kink to being called good boy.
Is it really the ‘good boy’ part, or just the validation? Because I could say the same thing about ‘good boy,’ AND about every other compliment doled out to me once every few months.
The only vaguely concerning bit I see here is the penultimate sentence. Evading consent is sketchy, but I’m not a behavioral psychologist and thus have no working knowledge on how that would impact his “treatment”.
I think that’s what stuck for me. Manipulation takes many forms, not all look evil. She should take these observations and talk to him about it, instead of using them as tools to treat his feelings.
Talk about what, though?
“Hello, I would like to give you peanuts sometimes when you’re sad. Do you accept these terms?”
What is he consenting to that he’s not already aware of?
Speaking of pavlovian conditioning, the reason I don’t like casinos, loot boxes in video games, gacha mechanics, etc., is not that I think those people haven’t consented to their money being taken from them. I just don’t think those are good institutions. Or practices. Whichever word applies. They take more than they give, and I don’t think that’s fair.
You’re grossly misrepresenting what this is. She got desserts and noted him as food motivated. That’s insulting. He only got happy because there was food for him to eat, really? No discussion of why he was sad before, just get him snacks and move on? Maybe talk to him and ask why he seemed upset before desert instead of just giving him a snack and hoping it’s better.
The woman here is trying to change his mood or behavior through dog training techniques instead of figuring out why he feels or acts a certain way. Is he aware that she is literally treating him like a dog? It comes across as her caring about his behavior in the moment more than his overall mental health.
He only got happy because there was food for him to eat, really?
I don’t know about you, but I love dessert.
instead of figuring out why he feels or acts a certain way.
So, 1, this doesn’t answer my question about what it is he hasn’t consented to.
2, how is it you know she’s not interested in his life story?
It’s odd, sweet, I think. She’s doing her best in the way she knows best
