Since neither von Osten nor the experimenters knew the answer in the second experiment, there was no expectant gesture, and therefore no cue to signal the correct answer.Ĭlever Hans was finally debunked-but this just goes to show the power of body language cues! Surprisingly, he could even detect small head movements as slight as ⅓ millimeter! Whenever the crowd gave an “expectant gesture” toward an answer-such as by bending the head slightly forward-Clever Hans picked up on that and knew when to stop tapping his hoof. It turns out, the key to Hans’s cleverness was his ability to read gestures. The horse was then asked to add the 2 numbers together.Īnd for the first time, Clever Hans failed. In this experiment, von Osten whispered a number into the horse’s left ear, and another experimenter whispered a different number into the horse’s right ear. Upon examination, Clever Hans was still able to count correctly! It seemed that Clever Hans was one especially talented horse.īut skepticism continued, and it wasn’t until a second experiment was performed that the truth was finally revealed. The experimenters, figuring that it was von Osten that was secretly telling the horse the correct answer, removed von Osten from the scene and submitted the horse for questioning. How was this possible? Was this just an extremely gifted horse, or was there suspicious activity going on behind the scenes? A formal investigation was conducted to find out.
Clever Hans was so smart that he could tell time, recall musical pitch, and even count the number of people wearing eyeglasses in the crowd. Named “Clever Hans,” the horse attracted crowds from afar by showing off his ability to count by tapping his hoof.
And this wasn’t just an ordinary horse-this horse became one of the most famous horses in history for his ability to count. It was the year 1900 in old Berlin when a man named Herr von Osten purchased a horse.
Doubletake move how to#
how to tell if someone is aroused by looking at their forehead.the #1 head cue you can use to persuade someone to agree with you.the head cue that can boost your attraction (in less than one second!).how one horse shocked the world and drew in crowds… using body language.Here’s what you’ll learn in this article: So what exactly is the head saying? And what are the 26 different head gestures to know? Since the head houses our brain, we instinctively move our heads depending on how we feel. Did you know that head movement is highly correlated with how we speak? We can’t help but nod, twist, and turn our heads, depending on what we say.