Quotes from Karen Pryor

One reason punishment doesn't usually work is that it does not coincide with the undesirable behavior; it occurs afterward, and sometimes, as in courts of law, long afterward. The subject therefore may not connect the punishment to his or her previous deeds; animals never do, and people often fail to. If a finger fell off every time someone stole something, or if cars burst into flames when they were parked illegally, I expect stolen property and parking tickets would be nearly nonexistent.

Training is a loop, a two-way communication in which an event at one end of the loop changes events at the other, exactly like a cybernetic feedback system; yet many psychologists treat their work as something they do to a subject, not with the subject.

When you stop relying on aversive controls such as threats, intimidation, and punishment, and when you know how to use reinforcement to get not just the same but better results, your perception of the world undergoes a shift. You don't have to become a wimp. You don't have to give up being in charge. You lose nothing of yourself. You just see things you didn't see before.

that aversives stop behavior, they don't start it; and that fear and pain produce completely unpredictable and usually highly undesirable side effects, including being both exciting and reinforcing to the punisher. (p.15)

Nobody should be allowed to have a baby until they have first been required to train a chicken

As with clicker-trained animals, deliberate use of intimidation almost certainly moves your learner off the SEEKING circuit and onto the conditioned fear path in the amygdala. You may get compliance, but learning slows way down.

Then, that memorably powerful look into my eyes told me something more: compared to dogs, wolves are grown-ups. He was not asking for help, head down, forehead wrinkled, as a dog might: "Is this right? What do you want?" Instead, head high, gaze level, he was assessing me, like a poker player: "Are you in or out?" Judging that I was in, he made his move; and we both won. (p.6)

Fear is the enemy of learning. It's the negator of joy, the preventer of play, the inhibitor of trust and love. Fear just gets in the way, slows things down, and causes unnecessary pain.

The animal has discovered, in me, a new resource, like a new water hole or berry patch. Thus it takes a new and intense interest in what I do. That opens up huge opportunities for understanding. (p.13)

To people schooled in the humanistic tradition, the manipulation of human behavior by some sort of conscious technique seems incorrigibly wicked, in spite of the obvious fact that we all go around trying to manipulate one another's behavior all the time, by whatever means come to hand.

My idea of recreation in those busy years, was to leave the porpoise training for an hour or two, round up a bunch of children, and go play at training the ponies. I don't know where I found the strength.

Nancy taught two hens to help her sort flowers to make leis. She set them down by a basket of three colors of plastic flowers. One hen quickly pulled out all the red flowers, and another the white ones, leaving the pink flowers in the basket.

I have already discovered that it is useless to ask neuroscientists questions that lie outside their specialty. The dopamine guys know the dopamine guys, but they don't know the cognitive-processing guys.

reinforcement-based technology is that at least as far as animals and children go, we now have a realistic way to keep them and take care of them and teach them without automatically using fear.

that aversives stop behavior, they don't start it; and