Dog training! Right up my alley
Perhaps information on classical conditioning will be helpful in some circumstances.
Classical conditioning is the pairing of two stimuli and the impact of this pairing is on internal states and involuntary bodily responses.
The reason why I think it will be helpful is because that in most instances as far as I can tell, where we automatically act in anger or fear, a change of internal state comes first. It probably applies to more internal states than those two though. And there are many different weaknesses.
Also, some of the professional trainers pay a lot more attention to classical conditioning in their foundational programs before they introduce operant conditioning to influence the outward or visible forms of the behaviour. This is because internal states can be in conflict with the desired behaviour and that can introduce a lot of problems later. The catch cry is 'Pavlov before Skinner!'
The classic example is Pavlov's dogs.
As the story goes Pavlov had some dogs in a laboratory environment and it was noticed that their states changed in anticipation of being fed. They would start to salivate and focus more on the actions of the attendant.
Food is an unconditioned stimulus - a dog doesn't have to be taught to salivate around food as this is part of it's genetic heritage or cellular memory.
Next before preparing the food, Pavlov rang a bell and had the attendants prepare and deliver the food soon after. The bell, in this instance started out as a neutral stimulus - it had no impact on the state of the dog. After it had been repetitively paired with the unconditioned stimuli, or food, the bell became a conditioned stimuli and elicited the same response as the food.
Neutral stimulus - no impact on internal state.
Unconditioned stimulus - natural and expected impact on internal state.
Conditioned stimulus - one that has been paired with an unconditioned stimulus and now delivers the same impact on the internal state as the unconditioned stimulus.
The significance of the above is that a conditioned stimulus can be largely subconscious. A trainer that I followed described the impact of classical condtioning in some circumstances as: 'An adrenaline based reaction to subconcious stimuli.'
If the word stimuli is now substituted with the word triggers, as they can be interchangeable, then more might find the information helpful. There is adaptive purposes for both negative and positive states, but how often are they actually classically conditioned and happen automatically regardless of the nuances of current circumstances? I'd hazzard a guess that it's more often than we might suppose.
There's an exercise that is given to peeps who have anxiety or panic attacks that is supposed to help ground them in the here and now. It consists of asking them to list what they can see, hear, taste, smell and feel on their skin. That could work for uncovering subconscious triggers to other classically conditioned states then to figure out if the reaction is rational in the given circumstances.
The thing is that if work needs to be done to desensitize or modify a response to a trigger, the exact trigger has to be identified and presented.
Anyways here's one example of a case history we were given to study.
12 month old male German Shepherd started aggressing towards random people and at random times. The particular trainer working with the dog was very keen to isolate the trigger for the aggression. Saving the dog was dependent on this because he felt that if he could isolate the trigger, he could desensitise the dog to it. Otherwise the dog was heading for a dangerous dog order. Detailed notes were collected from all the victims about their appearance, what they were wearing, what they were doing, what perfumes, soaps, aftershave they used etc. A common denominator couldn't be found. So he went back over the notes of the dogs history. There was an incident when the dog was about 5-6 months old where his family had some guests over and they decided to call for pizza delivery, but they forgot to turn the front light on. The pizza guy come into the dark yard and didn't see the dog. The dog barked at him and he lashed out in fear and kicked out at the dog. The people come out of the house and turned the light on and there was seemingly no harm done. Pizza guy was fine and admitted he was just surprised and the dog seemed fine and not hurt seriously. Turned out though that the dogs aggression trigger was the smell of pizza! All the victims had recently eaten pizza! Doggo was successfully counter conditioned and desensitized to the smell of pizza.
So just goes to show that the stimuli that elicits a given response may not necessarily be what we think it is. The stmiulus may also in reality be a neutral stimulus in other contexts.
