Emotions and challenging behaviour
A webinar with with Karolina Westlund, December 14, 2022.
Challenging behaviour in animals can range from inconvenient to embarrassing to exasperating - to the people who have to live with them. To the animals involved, those behaviours are often not problematic at all, but rather a solution to a problem that they're experiencing - and our task is often to help the animal find another solution that's less annoying to us - or to remove the animal's problem altogether.
This webinar will provide a framework for how to approach behavioural challenges. Using a holistic perspective involving ethological, affective and behaviour analytical approaches, we will discuss the following:
- how mood states influence perception, decision making and behaviour - and how we can change the mood to change those challenging behaviours.
- how emotional reactions to triggers in the environment affect behaviour, and how we through carefully addressing those triggers can change emotions - and change those challenging behaviours.
- how understanding the behaviour's function can help explain what's going on - and how we can change that function to change those challenging behaviours.
The different techniques and perspectives used at each of these three levels of approach will be outlined in the presentation.
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BIO
Karolina Westlund helps pet guardians and people working professionally with animals to get happier, reasonably well-behaved animals that thrive in the care of humans. She teaches animal behaviour management through blog posts, the odd free short online course, as well as more extensive online courses. She is an associate professor of Ethology at Stockholm University and sometimes publishes scientific articles related to enrichment, animal training, and wellbeing.
