Cognitive Dissonance? In a dog?!?!

I had Bagel in the vet’s office today, and I was trying to keep him interested in a Kong stuffed with his wet food, but he wasn’t having it. There were just too many other sights and smells to distract him, and the result was a lot of squirming while the vet was trying to examine him.

I decided to try something based on what I had learned about cognitive dissonance in college. The theory goes something like this:

Suppose you put a lot of time, money and energy into something (for example, our trip to Flo

rence), but it doesn't turn out well (massive crowds and 100 degree weather). The disappointment of having wasted your resources is too painful to bear. So your mind basically revises the outcome and tricks you into believing that it was somehow worth it ("... but just seeing Michelangelo's statue of David made it all worthwhile!").

(By the way, I really do think that, but having spent several thousand dollars on the trip probably gave David a little extra sheen.)

I remember reading about experiments were subjects were asked to fill out surveys to benefit cancer research. Some people were given quick one-page surveys, and others were asked to fill out tedious 20 page surveys. Afterwards, the people who had filled out the longer surveys rated the cause of cancer research as more important and worthwhile than people who filled out the shorter survey on the same thing.

I wanted to see if I could use this principle on Bagel. If I asked him for an obedience command and offered him a bite of food as a reward, would he be more interested in taking the food than when I had offered it to him "for free?"

I asked Bagel him to touch my hand with his nose. When he did it, I offered him the food. Sure enough, he started eating -- the same food he had rejected as uninteresting a moment before!

I asked him for more touches, and each time he did it, I rewarded him with a little more food. In this way, I was able to keep him still until the vet was done with the examination.

Was it the fact that he had to work for his food that made it seem more worth eating? Was it that the game of touch interested him and distracted him from his overstimulating environment? Or was it simply that taking away the food made it seem suddenly valuable?

I don’t know. I suppose I could design some experiments to find out. But if I were to guess, I'd say that the same principle was at work in Bagel that made the statue of David one of the most stunningly beautiful things I've ever seen.