Reactivity Unpacked: Negativity Bias and Recency Bias in Dogs

Hello, dog peeps. Jack here. Just a quick one before we get into this episode. You may or may not be aware that when I'm not talking dog stuff with Max, I in fact interview people who are incarcerated in prisons across the United States on a show called One Minute Remaining Stories from the Inmates. And that show has been nominated for an award in America. And I would love your support if you've got 60 seconds to click the link in the show notes of this episode and just vote for my show. That would be amazing if you could. Thank you very much indeed. Oh, and don't forget to verify your email address. Otherwise, the vote does not count. Thank you.

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It's the Dog People Podcast with your host Jack Lawrence. Secretly, I decided to start this podcast for Awesome free dog training advice. You know, Malinois seem to be like the dog at the moment. Like, I think people see them on Instagram doing these incredible things. Yeah. Go, oh my God, that's awesome. And then they get one like, oh my God, what the fuck have I done? And Max O'Neill.

You would not believe how many people I meet and I go, what made you want to get, say, an Aussie Shepherd? They go, I don't know. I'd go, had you met one before? They go, no. If you want to ask me how often I walk my own dog a week, it's only twice a week.

It's the Dog People Podcast, a podcast hopefully giving you a no-nonsense approach to dog training so you never have to shout, it's okay, he's friendly. My name's Jack Lawrence, not a dog trainer, just a dog training enthusiast. But that's why we've got the man in the know when it comes to dog training, Max O'Neill, Down Under Dog Trainer. And the company in the nose when it comes to insurance, pet insurance that is, is Knowse, a multi-award-winning Australian pet insurance company built to help pet parents stay informed and supported throughout their pet's life. Make sure you check them out, knose.com.au, issued by Pacific International Insurance. Uh, Max, we're continuing on with our reactivity series, but today we're talking about our dogs being biased.

Yeah. So today we're going to look at our, you might've heard these terms before, listeners, negativity bias and recency bias, what this means for our dogs, how it relates to reactivity. And we'll give you a few examples so you can break it down and, uh, probably going to have a few aha moments listening to this. We're like, ah, that's why my dog thinks or behaves this way. So

I know, I know negativity bias, but the other one, I have no idea what you're talking about. So I'm going to learn here also.

Let's start with recency bias. So recency bias is where we give more weight to things that have happened recently than things in the past. So let's just say our dog for the last 8 years has gotten on great with other dogs and is like, oh, dogs are amazing. I love dogs. I have the best time. And then in the space of a month, they run into one or two that have a good crack at them. And then they go, you know what? Dogs are shit. I hate dogs. That's their recency bias kicking in. It's like, hey, for your whole life, these have been pretty good. It's just really the last month where things haven't gone as well. But our recency bias puts a lot more weight onto more recent experience than old ones, if that makes sense.

Yeah, 100%.

Cool. So that can sometimes be why if something bad has happened to your dog, like a bad trip to the vet, a bad social interaction with the dog, you know, maybe you've clipped their nails forever and accidentally trimmed their wick one day, things like that. That's why a lot of the reason why they can put way more weight onto, you know, those experiences despite them having 100 good ones behind them. It's their recency bias. So that's how it works. We, we succumb to it. Our dogs succumb to it. It's just a thing. How we can overcome that is just by instantly trying to overlay that with tons more good experiences. So if I have someone reach out being like, oh, my dog was recently attacked on the weekend, we're worried about them becoming reactive, I'm like, Have they started yet? Nope. Have they got plenty of dog friends? Yeah, they love my mum's dog, my brother's dog, our neighbour's dog. Cool. Go and have as many playdates as possible in the next couple of weeks to try and instantly push that thing back into the rearview mirror so that we put less weight.

So the recency bias becomes the good, the good stuff. Yeah, exactly.

Spot on. Yeah. So that recency bias leads more towards our most recent experiences being good because the more recent something is, the more weight it carries, the further back in time it gets pushed, The less weight it carries. That's our recency bias in a nutshell. Does that make sense?

Yeah, very straightforward.

Yeah, nice simple concept. And again, we see it a lot with dogs, whereas, um, you know, and that's a big one why when we start our reactivity training, we're really big on owners going, hey, like from the moment you sign up, like this moment in time, we really need to get super good at managing our dogs where we're not taking them above threshold, we're not taking them into their red zone, we're not taking them to places where a dog might rush up to them because We're trying to go like, from the moment you sign up, your dog's most recent reaction is a thing of the past. And over the next few weeks, they never react again, either through solid training or solid management and, and both, so that that just gets left further and further and further behind. And we want them going, hey, like, I've not had a bad experience in weeks. That was ages ago. It really helps them to move on, and we can use the recency bias in our favour. But like you said, stacking up heaps of good experiences in a short amount of time So that dog's like, hey, I'll give him these a lot of weight. Like, this seems to be the trend lately.

And that's why being on it has got to be so important because obviously you can go through all this process and you go through weeks and weeks and weeks of building that all up and building great experiences. And then one incident, bang, you're right back to the beginning again. And it can be so frustrating and upsetting for people with dogs like that. And, you know, I feel for those people so much when they just work so, so hard and then one incident can just set you back weeks.

It's shit. It's so sad to see, you know, some of my best clients it happens to and it's never their They're like, hey, we didn't go to this area. We're in an on-lead area. We went at an off-peak time and it was just some really selfish, you know, inconsiderate person, zero control of their dog. And look, the dog running over might be super friendly, but if our dog's not ready to be rushed by a 30-kilo Golden Retriever who's full of beans, like it can be enough to set them back where they're going, hey, you, I was just starting to understand that dogs were safe or that to keep my cool. And then this happened and I was not ready for it. And boom, it's a bit of a setback. Yeah. And that's, that's an unfortunate message we get from Pretty regular, I'd say. I was going to say from time to time, but it's not at all uncommon, sadly.

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But that's, I think that's why it's so important for people, especially with dogs that are friendly. Like I've got Kira, she's very friendly, but I never let her just charge and rush over to a dog and say hello. Exactly. Because of that simple, the fact you don't know if that other person, and I see all these comments, oh, if your dog's reactive like that, it shouldn't be out and shouldn't be doing this and shouldn't be doing that. It's like, well, no, you need to have a little bit more control because they could have been working really hard, like we've spoken about, for months on their dog's reactivity and getting him into a great place. And then your dog, friendly or not, just bolts on over and it just takes that one thing for it to go, whoa, no, no, no, I'm not happy with this. And bang, and away you go.

Yeah.

And it's exactly like Kira has never so much as growled at another dog, but I won't let her, like, because she loves dogs. I mean, she's just, it's her weakness. But I will never let her just bolt over to another dog and just start, you know, harassing a dog.

Yeah, spot on. And it's like whether that dog's clearly reactive or even if that dog seems friendly, it's like you can have 2 friendly dogs where things can get off on the wrong foot simply by one dog sprinting into their face. Like if we were at the park right now and a man started running at it, it's like, you bet I'm fly kicking that guy in the head the moment he arrives.

Yeah. Because you're like, what are you doing? Like, yeah. And that's it. And that's the thing. Like, you know, people listen to this, if you've got great dogs that aren't reactive. And, you know, you can help other people by just being more considerate about what your dog's doing, even if it is great and even if it is well trained. That's fantastic. But just, you know, I think everyone needs to be considerate of everyone else.

Or it just ends up being this never-ending cycle.

100%.

Yeah. A good example, I suppose, of like while we're kind of on that tangent is like when I lived in the UK and used to go to London every weekend is you just did not see reactive dogs in London because again, you don't, you wouldn't let your dog off lead in London.

Yeah.

A, because I mean, they're gonna get— they're gonna be dead.

Yeah.

And then number 2, you wouldn't let your dog just pull on a 20-meter-long retractable and run up to another dog because again, you don't have room to give your dog 20 meters of space. So from the get-go, those dogs that they see are just sitting on the tube either side of each other, passing each other on a footpath. Like, you know, there's very limited parks there, but you just wouldn't see all that much reactivity because like you just can't afford— they're just not put in situations where that's much of a thing. Again, because those parks are in the middle of a city with roads on all sides, not really many of them are fenced, people don't take dogs unless they're really happy with their recall, unless they've done heaps of training prior. And, um, yeah.

That's why I now mainly go to areas where there are off-leash areas near a road with no fences.

Yeah, 100%.

Because you will mostly find dogs that are actually very well behaved. Spot on. And good recall and aren't just going to go running around like lunatics.

That's it. Yeah. And it's funny, people don't, you know, sometimes we'll go to these places and have people who Um, you know, their dog's over and they just won't call them back. I'm like, hey, you want to get your dog? And they kind of make a very like half-assed effort. I go, all right, well, we're going across the road now. And I'll sort of make an effort of walking towards the road with Nelson, and all of a sudden, pretty quickly, oh shit, okay. Last one on the recency bias. So again, if you're one of these people who you've been working through reactivity and all of a sudden you've had experiences push your dog back, I get it's deflating and demoralizing, but the worst thing you can do is fall off your training back wagon and just go, fuck, like, this is all gone to shit. Instead, get back out there. Maybe give them a day off, whatever. But if you feel like they're fine tomorrow, like, get back on that horse and start overlaying it with good experiences. Take that bad thing that happened and instantly push in the rearview mirror.

Yeah.

And we inherently already do this instinctively, especially with kids. The moment they fall over, and that's the most recent thing, look at this shiny new thing.

Hey, let's do this instead.

Like, forget about that. We try and move on as quickly as possible. That's your recency bias. Your negativity bias is our bias towards putting more weight on negative experiences than positive ones. The 2 examples I always give are, you know, let's just say on my way here I drove past 1,000 cars and then one little green car nearly ran me off the road. I might forget every other car and not have any recollection of what I drove past today, but that one little green car, I'd remember the color, the make, the model, maybe even the rego, who was driving it.

You're stewing on it.

Everything. And I'd go, When I get— and when I got here, if Jack could go, hey, how was your drive? Even though 1,000 of those cars were ace and it was just one of them that was shit, I'd go, oh, terrible drive, mate. People can't drive today. They're shit drivers. That's negativity bias. We put way more weight on our negative experiences than positive ones. And this is just a safety mechanism. That's what keeps us alive. We tend to just do that.

It's like me reading reviews.

Yeah. Yes.

I'll say I'll see 90 great reviews and there'll be one shit one, and that'll be the one thing that ruins my day. And make it like, how was your day? I'm like, terrible.

Yeah.

Oh yeah. The show's rubbish. It's awful. No one likes it.

Or I'll do that with a restaurant. We're like, my wife and I are terrible. We'll look at a restaurant and we're like, oh, 4.9, this looks great. Oh, and we'll go from reading all reviews to just click on the lowest ones. And it'll be this person who can't spell, doesn't use a single full stop, clearly full of shit. And we'll go, oh, I don't know about this restaurant.

Yeah, yeah.

And, and same as well, like, I mean, I remember when I was doing marketing at uni and such a big thing is people are like 80% whatever the figure is. Anyway, I'm not going to pluck a figure out of my ass, but people are so much more likely to leave a negative review than a positive one. They'll walk out of the restaurant and you can bend over backwards, give them the best meal of their life, and they'll go, thanks. That's it. Yeah. But you forget the salt, you're a bit too late, and it's 1 star. And even same with reviews and referrals, like, you're more likely to tell people where not to go than where to go, and that's your negativity bias. So it's the reason why, again, if your dog's had 100 good experiences with the dog and they have one bad one, it can weigh heavily. And, um, you know, that's why it's all the more reason to— if we're doing reactivity training, when we're doing like our weekly calls with clients, like, hey, how's your week been? I'm really quick to identify if a client's gone, oh, he's only blown up 3 times. I'm like, no, no, Stephanie, that's not only 3 times, that's 3 massive experiences. It's 3 times 100. You've got to have 100 good experiences to outweigh that. Did you have 100 good experiences? Nah, probably 5. If your score sheet you think is 5 to 3, it's really 5 to 300. You just can't afford to have bad experiences as a part of your activity journey because it's just, it's just not going to get you anywhere. Simple as that. That's why negativity bias is so important to understand.

And it's why, you know, again, as we say so often, it's like not rushing these things as well. You know, it takes time. People want this thing to be fixed and they want it to be fixed now so they can have their, you know, dream dog that they always wanted and go the places they want to go with their dog. And so they try and rush it and they think, oh my God, didn't react. Okay, we can go. And then bang, something bad happens and back to square one. Spot on. That's it. And look, I'm, I'm, I'm just terrible with that sort of stuff. I just want things to happen now. I'm very impatient, you know, especially when it came to Kira with this stuff. There was occasions where I was like, oh, that's great. She's not chasing things anymore. I'll be fine. We'll be going. Let's go. And then all of a sudden, bang, it happens. You're like, oh shit, idiot.

Yep.

All right. Any questions? As always, the Dog People Podcast on Facebook. Make sure you get involved and don't forget, Max, Down Under Dog Trainer has the Reactivity Rewire course available for you to check out on his website. You don't have to be in the area to get involved. So make sure you have a look at that. The link to which is in the show notes of the episode. We'll see you on the next one. The Dog People Podcast is a Mashed Pumpkin production hosted by Jack Lawrence and Max O'Neill, edited, produced, and audio production by Jack Lawrence.

Why can't we get AI to production? Our competitors are already— How do we keep data secure? AWS AI cuts through the noise with ready-to-use agents and the broadest set of AI tools. Stop overthinking, start building. AWS AI. Is how.

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