Seligman and optimism/pessimism in dogs

Can Dogs Hope? part 3

Before we go any further, we need to examine an experiment conducted Martin Seligman, to see what it establishes regarding canine capabilities, and what implications this has for our investigation.

The experiment(1) was designed to establish whether dogs could learn to be helpless. There were three groups of dogs. Each dog in the first group was given a series of electric shocks in a hammock, which they were unable to control in any way. Seligman calls this 'the yoked group.' The second group, the 'escape group' is given the same electric shocks, but is able to stop them by pressing a panel with their nose. The third group receives no shocks - this is the control group.

All dogs were then given a trial in a shuttle box (a cage divided in two with a jumpable barrier.) The floor was electrified, and the only way they could escape was by jumping the barrier. The difference in response between the yoked group and the escape group was striking. While the both the escape group and the control group quickly got the hang of leaping the barrier to avoid the shocks, two-thirds of the yoked group failed, and instead started to simply lie down and whine in pain.

The implication is clear - dogs can learn to be helpless, they can learn to become pessimistic about the effectiveness of their own actions, and generalise this pessimism to other scenarios. This can work the other way as well - dogs who have become pessimism can learn optimism by being placed in a scenario where they are able to control the outcome of the situation.

In Learned Optimism, Seligman convincingly presents this finding as a refutation of the stimulus-response model of behaviour proposed by behaviourism - under behaviourism, dogs should not be able to generalise between dissimilar experiences.

This presents two challenges to the proposition that dogs are unable to hope, or unable to be hopeful. The first is simply in giving an extended notion of a dog's cognitive capabilities which allows the possibility of a dog having such a disposition as hope. However, this is just the outline of an objection, and needs to be developed. The second is that dogs seem capable of dispositions - optimism and pessimism - which seem, at least on the surface, similiar to hope and despair, or hopefulness and hopelessness. It's the second of these that I plan to focus on in my next post.

(1) For a more detailed account of this experiment, and other related experiments, see Seligman, Martin E. P. Helplessness - On Depression, Development and Death, W. H. Freeman And Company:San Francisco,1975.