The man who listens to behavior: folk wisdom and behavior analysis from a real horse whisperer.
Top trainers use ABA without knowing it—steal their moves and test them.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The authors watched famed horse trainer Monty Roberts work.
They wrote down every move he made with the horses.
Then they matched each move to a basic ABA principle like reinforcement or extinction.
No horses or people were tested; this is a story-style paper.
What they found
Roberts never took a behavior-analysis class.
Still, he used reinforcement, shaping, and stimulus control perfectly.
The paper shows his folk methods are pure ABA in action.
How this fits with other research
Kurland et al. (2022) took the idea further. They mapped clicker trainers’ loopy training onto our shaping protocols so you can copy the loops in your next lesson.
Lattal et al. (2022) pushed the field to test these intuitive tricks with real data. They said, Treat horse and dog methods like autism interventions—run the experiment.
Pratt (1985) found the same hidden overlap in Adlerian psychology. Therapists were using operant ideas long before Skinner; Roberts just did it with animals instead of kids.
Why it matters
If a cowboy can invent reinforcement schedules, so can your bus driver, teacher, or parent.
Watch what natural experts already do.
Write it down.
Give it a behavior-analytic name.
Now you have a new, street-tested procedure ready for measurement.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The popular novel and movie The Horse Whisperer are based on the work of several real‐life horse whisperers, the most famous of whom is Monty Roberts. Over the last 50 years, Roberts has developed a technique for training horses that is both more effective and less aversive than traditional training techniques. An analysis of Roberts' methods (as described in his book, The Man Who Listens to Horses ) indicates a deep understanding of behavioral principles including positive reinforcement, timeout, species‐specific defense reactions, “learned helplessness,” and the behavioral analysis of language. Roberts developed his theory and techniques on the basis of personal experience and folk wisdom, and not as the result of formal training in behavior analysis. Behavior analysts can clearly learn from such insightful yet “behaviorally incorrect” practitioners, just as such practitioners can benefit from the objective science of behavior analysts.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1999 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1999.72-139