I am not a specialist on this story, but as far as I know there is no
eveidence that von Osten (Hans' owner) intended to deceive anoyone (or
indeed believed any other than that he had taught math to his horse).
Indeed, isn't the whole point of the story that one can *think* one is
training for one (spectacular) thing, and it can turn out that one is
unwittingly training for a (mundane) other thing? If von Osten had been
a fraud, that wouldn't be the case. It may be that, because Von Osten
did not accept Pfungst's findings, and continued to show his horse
afterwards, that some thought him to be a fraud (but even then, the fact
that he never charged to witness the horse do its tricks would make him
a very odd sort of fraud artist indeed!).
Pfungst's entire study had been translated:
Pfungst, O. (1911). Clever Hans (The horse of Mr. Von Osten): A
contribution to experimental animal and human psychology (Trans. C. L.
Rahn). New York: Henry Holt. (Originally published in German, 1907)
Robert Wozniak (who is a respected historian of psychology) has written
a new introduction to the Thoemmes Press reprint of Pfungst. It used to
be at http://www.thoemmes.com/psych/pfungst.htm but I can't get that
site to come up just now.
Regards,
Chris
--
Christopher D. Green
Department of Psychology
York University
Toronto, ON M3J 1P3
Canada
416-736-5115 ex. 66164
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.yorku.ca/christo
======================================
Jim Dougan wrote:
TIPsters.....
I have been meaning to look into this for years.... The question came
up again in class today, and at least I remembered to follow-up.
I see two different versions of the Clever Hans story in books.
Some suggest that the ruse was unintentional - that Hans was picking
up on subtle signals but the signals were not sent intentionally.
The other account suggests that the trainer intentionally trained Hans
to respond to eye contact, and that Hans was in fact an intentional
fraud.
Does anyone know which account is correct?
-- Jim
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