A book called ‘How to talk anyone; 92 little tricks for big success in relationship’ by Leil Lowndes apart from pretty interesting tricks tells the story of clever Hans!
Apparently Hans could do addition, subtraction and even division and multiplication! Later of Hans even knew languages!
What’s so great about that you say!? Now if Hans was a two year old kid it would be amazing!
But he was actually much more!
Well, Hans was a horse!
Clever Hans was a horse in early 20th-century Germany who appeared to perform mathematical and intellectual tasks!
It was of course a great trick in response to subtle cues! So much so that it is now a well known phenomenon called the Clever Hans effect and serves as a famous cautionary tale in psychology and scientific research!
So Hans was owned by Wilhelm von Osten, a high school mathematics teacher who believed that animals had underestimated intelligence!
From around 1891, von Osten trained Hans to answer questions by tapping his hoof or using a letter board. Questions could be asked orally or in writing, and Hans’s apparent abilities included addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, telling time, and reading/spelling German words!
Hans’s performances were a public sensation, drawing large, enthusiastic crowds across Germany. A commission of experts, including a circus manager and the director of the Berlin Zoo, initially concluded that no tricks were involved!
Then some more research lead by psychologist Oskar Pfungst lead to some crucial discoveries in 1907!
Hans’s accuracy dropped significantly if the person asking the question did not know the answer themselves!
The horse struggled to respond correctly if the questioner was out of sight or completely still!
Pfungst concluded that Hans was not performing mental tasks but was incredibly adept at reading microscopic changes in the questioner’s posture, breathing, and facial tension. When Hans reached the correct number of taps, the human would subtly change their expression or movement, which cued the horse to stop!
These cues were entirely involuntary and unconscious on the part of the humans involved!
So Hans was clever! But not ‘internally’ clever but a clever Mentalist! That is still special and rare by the way!
The “Clever Hans effect” now describes the phenomenon where a subject unintentionally receives and responds to subtle cues from an experimenter or questioner, thereby appearing to demonstrate abilities they do not possess!
This has had a lasting impact on scientific methodology, leading to the use of “double-blind” experiments in fields such as psychology and medicine to avoid research bias!
The Clever Hans effect remains relevant today, particularly in fields like artificial intelligence (AI). It is used to describe when a machine learning model appears to perform well but is actually relying on “shortcuts” or spurious correlations in the data rather than true understanding of the task at hand!
What happened to Hans?
Well, apparently and sadly it was sent to war and could have been killed or eaten by soldiers!
Unfortunately a clever animal is still apparently an animal…
Humans can act humane though! And really talented! Like Kamini Kaushal!
She will be missed
Om Shanti…
ramadocblog 