Building Assent and Voluntary Participation: Beyond “Control”

12 Dec Building Assent and Voluntary Participation: Beyond “Control”

When we talk about giving animals “control” in training, we stumble into vague territory. Control is a hypothetical construct. It’s abstract, unmeasurable, and it shifts the conversation away from behavior and back into feelings and intention.

Let’s ground ourselves in what we can observe and influence: the bird’s behavior, the environment it occurs in, and the consequences that follow.

Beyond Control: Understanding Assent

Instead of aiming to “give control,” we arrange conditions so that participation is voluntary, reinforcing, and sustainable. This is where assent comes in.

Assent is different from consent. Consent is legal, cognitive, verbal. Birds can’t give consent. What we can observe is behavioral assent: the bird’s willing, active participation in a process that has been trained using reinforcement and clear contingencies.

Assent is not just the absence of aggression or resistance. It’s the presence of engagement. Targeting. Stepping up. Moving towards cues. Maintaining station. Offering calm postures. All without coercion or force.

If a falcon flies to the glove on cue, remains relaxed, and takes reinforcement with ease, that’s assent. If a parrot steps onto a hand voluntarily and immediately receives something they value, that’s behavioral assent.

And just as importantly, we need to recognize when assent is absent. When a bird turns away, freezes, hesitates, or lunges, that’s information. That’s the bird saying, “Not right now. This isn’t working.”

The Dominance Myth: Let’s Put This to Rest

You’ve heard it before: “If you give the bird too much control, they’ll take over.” Or, “He needs to know who’s boss.”

Let’s be clear: Birds don’t dominate people. They don’t strategize ways to be in control. These are human social dynamics projected onto animals who are simply behaving in ways that have been selected by their environment.

Here’s what’s actually happening: A bird repeats behavior that produces reinforcing outcomes. If screaming has worked to gain attention, the bird will scream. If biting causes hands to retreat, the bird will bite. If stationing calmly leads to food or space, the bird will do that.

The behavior we see is not a dominance display. It’s a function of reinforcement history.

When someone says, “You’re letting the bird be in charge,” the answer is simple: No. I’m giving the bird the ability to behave in ways that are effective and safe. And that benefits both of us.

Predictability: The Foundation of Empowerment

When an animal can predict outcomes based on its own behavior, we say that behavior is under stimulus control. Stimulus control creates clarity, which leads to confidence, fluency, and long-term participation.

Simple example: The parrot sees a target cue. They touch it. They receive a reinforcer. That’s a predictable contingency. The bird learns: when I do X in response to Y, Z happens.

Now flip it. The cue is vague or changes each time. Sometimes the consequence comes, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes reinforcement is offered, sometimes a hand reaches suddenly and the bird is restrained.

That’s unpredictability. And unpredictability often leads to hesitation, avoidance, aggression, or complete breakdown in engagement.

Predictability is often the first reinforcer, especially for birds that have experienced coercion, deprivation, or confusion in the past.

Recognizing When Assent Is Absent

Lack of assent is often a sign of reduced degrees of freedom. When birds don’t have options that lead to reinforcing outcomes, behavior becomes constrained. Here’s how it shows up:

1. Avoidance: The bird turns, walks, flies, or orients away from the interaction or cue.
2. Freezing: The bird becomes still, rigid, or immobile. This is often misunderstood as compliance when it may actually reflect a total lack of behavioral options.
3. Delayed responding: Long pauses or slow execution after a cue. The bird is trying to weigh limited or unclear contingencies.
4. Aggression or threat displays: Lunging, biting, vocalizations. Often the result of repeated experiences where the bird couldn’t opt out.
5. Reinforcer rejection: The bird performs the behavior but then turns away from the reinforcer. This can indicate that the behavior was not voluntary or that the interaction itself has become aversive.

The bottom line: When birds lack the ability to act on their environment in ways that produce desired outcomes, they lack behavioral freedom. And when they lack behavioral freedom, assent disappears.

If there’s no functional no, then there’s no meaningful yes either.

Cooperation Is Trained, Not Assumed

One of the biggest traps in training is the belief that the bird should just get over it. “We’ve done it before, so they should be okay now.”

Here’s the truth: Cooperative behavior is not assumed, it’s not owed. It’s trained.

Scale training, voluntary medical care, crate entry. These behaviors don’t just happen because the bird is “used to it.” They happen because they’ve been carefully shaped with reinforcement and clear contingencies.

If the bird can’t opt out, it’s not cooperation. It’s tolerance. And tolerance is fragile.

If a bird can only engage with one behavior, but opt out for less reinforcement reinforcement value, like avoidance, that is not true choice.

Instead of expecting cooperation, we build it. One small behavior at a time. Lots of reinforcement. Exit ramps available. Clear signs of assent throughout.

Assent as a Feedback System

Here’s the mindset shift: Assent is not just the goal. It’s a feedback system.

Instead of asking, “Did the bird do the thing?” we ask, “What does the bird’s behavior tell me about the environment I’ve created?”

• If your bird targets consistently, that tells you the cue is clear and the reinforcer is valuable.
• If the bird hesitates, freezes, or walks away, something has reduced the value of participation or the contingencies are unclear.
• If the bird engages then opts out, that’s information. Maybe the reinforcer changed in value or the criteria were raised too fast.

In every case, the behavior is feedback. The animal is communicating through behavior what’s working and what isn’t.

When we treat assent this way, as real-time data, we stay in a position of responsiveness, not control.

Here’s why this matters:

• If you ignore the bird’s withdrawal, you teach the bird that saying no doesn’t work.
• If you push through hesitation, you make reinforcement less predictable.
• If you reinforce opt-ins and respect opt-outs, you create an environment where participation becomes safer, more reliable, and more frequent.

This turns training into a conversation, not a transaction. And assent becomes your compass.

Ready to Build Deeper Skills?

Understanding assent and voluntary participation is just the beginning. In the Avian Behavior Lab, you’ll see these concepts applied to real training challenges, from cooperative care to addressing fear responses.

Explore courses like:

• Degrees of Freedom: Building True Choice
• Fear and Aggression: A Constructional Approach
• Criteria in Training: Setting Birds Up for Success

Plus live workshops, case studies, and a community of professional trainers working through these same challenges.

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