Husband Training

An article in Newsweek http://www.newsweek.com/id/109614?g=1 is about a woman who wrote a book about how she modified her husband's behavior using animal-training techniques. Amy Sutherland says "the key to marital bliss is to ignore negative habits and reward positive ones, the same approach animal trainers use to get killer whales to leap from their tanks and elephants to stand on their heads." For example, to get her husband to stop throwing temper tantrums when he couldn't find his keys, she ignored his outbursts and refused to help with the search. That's what animal behaviorists call the Least Reinforcing Scenario. And to keep him from hovering over the stove when she cooked, she set a bowl of chips and salsa at the other end of the kitchen. That's called Engineering Incompatible Behaviors. Result: Happier marriage.