Wilhelm Von Osten's Influence On American Ethnology

We as humans try to train our pets to do some crazy human things, such as a dog riding a skate board to a dog speaking/singing. The 20th century are not the only ones to do so, in the late 1800’s a man by the name of Wilhelm von Osten believed that he had taught his Orlov Trotter, Clever Hans, to do math, along with a few other tasks. Osten was a German high school mathematics instructor living in Berlin. Osten, himself, was a student of phrenology, which is “the now discredited theory of one’s intelligence, character, and personality traits can be derived based on the shape of one’s head” (Bellows). Besides his teaching of mathematics, and learning of phrenology, Osten has a huge interest in animal intelligence, which is how he began testing

Osten finally thought that Hans was good enough to go in front of a crowd, so in 1891 he decided to preform free shows all around Germany (Horse). By the time he decided to show Hans to the public, he was also able to spell out names, tell time, and dates, all by the tapping of his hoof. Hans was able to draw rather large crowds even though his accuracy was not 100%. It was said to be that Hans accuracy was about 89% correct, estimating that his mathematics understanding was around the age of a fourteen year old boy (Bellows). With Hans drawing large crowds, those crowds consisted of skeptics, including Germany’s board of education, and New York Times (Carroll). They soon wanted to investigate Hans, which Osten agreed to for he thought there was no trickery

Hans was able to pick up the littlest of movements given off by the questioners or the crowed around him, which most humans would not even notice. His testing’s also gave evidence that “horses may have an enhanced sensitivity to inconspicuous body language, perhaps as a key part of their social interaction with other horses” (Bellows). Dedicated to Hans, the term “Clever Hans Effect” was created. This “Clever Hans Effect” is used to describe the influence of a questioner’s subtle and unintentional cues upon their subjects, in both human and animals (Bellows). Osten did not really appreciate the Clever Hans effect, so he continued to show Hans all around Germany still gathering large crowds everywhere he went