Clever Hans

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Introduction of the clever Hans

The Clever Hans (* 1895, † after 1916) was a horse of the breed Orlov trotter , allegedly expected and could count. In the years before the First World War , the schoolmaster and mathematics teacher Wilhelm von Osten caused quite a stir with Hans' unique skills.

Scientific sensation or fraud

Wilhelm von Osten with Clever Hans (around 1908)
Clever Hans on the pedal board (1909)

Hans answered the tasks of his “teacher” by tapping a hoof or by nodding / shaking his head. In this way, Hans was able to solve arithmetic problems, also spell and count objects or people. Von Osten was apparently so convinced of his teaching profession and his abilities that he believed that he could also apply his pedagogical methods to his horses - he had already owned and trained a Hans I before the clever Hans . In his later published book about the clever Hans, the psychologist Oskar Pfungst described von Osten as "astute in the teaching method and yet again without understanding for the most elementary forms of scientific investigation".

Finally, in September 1904, a 13-person scientific commission headed by Carl Stumpf , a philosophy professor and member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences , was appointed from the German capital to get to the bottom of the phenomenon. The commission initially suspected a trick or cheating on the part of the math teacher, but the horse answered tasks correctly when a stranger asked the questions and was absent from the east.

In the end, Oskar Pfungst, who was still a student of Stumpf at the time, solved the riddle: Although Hans did not master mathematics, he was able to interpret the finest nuances in the facial expression and body language of his human counterpart. Involuntarily the questioners took a tense posture before the decisive "correct" hoof-knocking of the horse; after the "correct answer" they inadvertently expressed signals of relief with their body language, which "the clever Hans" perceived in about 90% of all cases and in implemented the desired behavior . Of course, this only worked if the questioner knew the answer himself. However, “the body language and facial expressions of the person questioning were never documented by film recordings. Therefore, these unconscious and uncontrollable signals are still completely unknown. "

After the investigation was over, von Osten was very upset about the result. If his anger was initially directed against the horse, he soon regained his old confidence and von Osten did not allow any further experiments. The worldview he had built was quickly restored, and all undeniable facts that contradicted it were ignored.

Consequences for science

Attempt to perceive involuntary body movements

The so-called “ Kluger Hans Effect ” went down in the history of science as an important finding - not only in animal psychology - it helped experimental psychology to achieve a breakthrough. The Kluger-Hans effect is generally referred to as the unconscious one-sided influencing of the behavior of test animals, in particular in the direction that the effect expected in the experiment occurs. The effect can be avoided by using the research design of the so-called double - blind study or "unobtrusive measurements". The “Kluger Hans effect” as a reactivity (of the respondent on behavior, appearance and assumed values ​​of the interviewer as well as on the situation of the interview, see also interviewer effect) is also included in social research .

Consequences for the "Smart Hans"

The clever Hans, 1910

After von Osten died in 1909, the clever Hans passed into the possession of the businessman Karl Krall , who made further experiments with him and also trained other horses. He set up a psychological laboratory in the stable of the Secret Commerce Councilor von der Heydt in Elberfeld and worked there with a total of eleven horses, two donkeys, a pony and an elephant. The book Thinking Animals emerged from his series of experiments in 1912 ; he also published the magazine Tierseele . However, he was unable to achieve financial success and in 1916 he gave up his work with animals. Hans and the other calculating horses from Elberfeld were used in the First World War, the further fate of the clever Hans is unknown.

The "Kluge Hans" in fiction

In Chapters VI and VII of his novel Stormy Spring portrays the writer Frank Thiess three thinking horses, including one old dog that using a knock board on a chalkboard integer arithmetic problems shown resolve and (toward the fourth roots of six-digit numbers to) basic phrases in faulty orthography can spell. In a note on the novel, Thiess explicitly refers to Karl Krall's work Thinking Animals and Maurice Maeterlinck's report The Thinking Horses of Elberfeld (in: Der Fremd Gast , Jena 1914).

See also

literature

Historical

  • Oskar Pfungst: The horse of the Lord from the East (Der Kluge Hans). A contribution to experimental animal and human psychology. Verlag von Johann Ambrosius Barth, Leipzig 1907. (full text)
Oskar Pfungst: Der Kluge Hans: A contribution to non-verbal communication. 3. Edition. Frankfurter Fachbuchhandlung für Psychologie, Frankfurt am Main 1983, ISBN 3-89334-081-5 . (Reprint of the original from 1907)
  • John Watson: Review of Oskar Pfungst's The Lord's Horse from the East. In: Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology. Volume 18, 1908, pp. 329-331.
  • Karl Krall: Thinking Animals. Contributions to animal soul science based on own experiments. The clever Hans and my horses Muhamed and Zarif . Friedrich Engelmann, Leipzig 1912, p. 1-83 . (on-line)

Recent publications

  • Heike Baranzke: Only clever little boys go to heaven. The animal psychological dispute over a calculating horse at the beginning of the 20th century. In: Friedrich Niewöhner, Jean-Loup Seban (ed.): The soul of the animals. (= Wolfenbütteler Research. Volume 94). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2001, ISBN 3-447-04475-6 , pp. 333-379.
  • Hans Joachim Gross: A forgotten revolution. The story of the clever horse Hans. In: Biology in Our Time. Volume 44, No. 4, 2014, pp. 268–272, doi: 10.1002 / biuz.201410544

Web links

Commons : Kluger Hans  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c The clever Hans - an Orlov trotter amazes the world. ( Memento from September 10, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) On: Unser-kabardiner.de , viewed on September 10, 2014.
  2. ↑ Brains and tricks: 100 years of discussion about intelligence in animals since "Smart Hans". ( Memento from December 14, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) Humboldt University Berlin, Institute for Psychology (2004).
  3. ↑ Hans Joachim Gross: A forgotten revolution. The story of the clever horse Hans. In: Biology in Our Time. Volume 44, No. 4, 2014, pp. 268–272, doi: 10.1002 / biuz.201410544
  4. ↑ Paul Watzlawick : How Real is Reality? Piper, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-492-00474-1 , p. 44.
  5. ↑ Marc Naguib: Methods of behavioral biology. Springer Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-540-33494-7 , p. 40.
  6. ↑ Cozy, cave, goodbye. On: zeit.de of May 11, 2005, accessed on September 10, 2014.
  7. ^ Frank Thiess : Stormy Spring. A novel among young people. rororo Taschenbuch 62, Hamburg 1952