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Potential Side Effects of Punishment
When punishment procedures are misapplied, it can cause terrible side effects, by which I mean that in the course of punishing your dog for doing something that you don't want him to do, you may inadvertently cause him to emit some responses that you didn't have in mind. With, perhaps, some very ugly, unpleasant responses among them.
However, it should be noted that if you employ the formula for changing behavior in which punishment is but one component in a three-part approach, those side effects can be all but completely avoided. Please find below a list of the side effects that can result from using punishment in the absence of the other, counterbalancing components of the formula for changing behaivor.
The Side Effects of Using Punishment in the Absence of Counterbalancing Procedures
- Punishment can disrupt social relationships as the subject grows to dislike those who punish him almost as much as he dislikes being punished.
- Emotional upset can result.
- The development of a dislike for an entire domain can develop. For example, if you repeatedly punish your dog for making one particular mistake during obedience training, that can have a generalizing, bleed-over effect that causes your dog to begin to dislike everything about obedience work.
- Avoidance behavior can result as your dog develops not only a dislike of training, but also the desire to avoid being trained and the desire to steer clear of the person who trains him.
- Aggressive behavior can develop as your dog gets fed up with the constant negativity, and starts to copy the aggressive behavior you have modeled for him, as he begins to punish you for punishing him.
- Finally, punishment used in the absence of counterbalancing techniques can cause the punished party to feel badly about himself, be he dog or human. After all, when it seems that everything you do is wrong and nothing you do is right, you can start feeling defeated and down on yourself.