Ever wondered how to pass the Dead Man’s Test? The Dead Man’s Test is a simple procedure developed by Ogden Lindsley back in 1965, when Sam the Sham was singing Wooly Bully and the Beatles’ incomprehensible film Help! was playing in movie theaters. The test is designed to determine if something can be categorized as behavior, which may not seem important to you, but is very important to people who seek to analyze it. Here is the test, paraphrased slightly:

If a dead man can do it, it ain’t behavior, and if a dead man can’t do it, then it is behavior.

What, you might be wondering, exactly is it that dead men CAN do?

For one thing, they are very good at being quiet for long periods of time. Dead men are also very good at keeping secrets, which may have something to do with how they get that way. But mostly, what they are very good at is NOT doing things. My father’s second wife used to say that if you want to get something done, ask a busy person to do it. But the reverse is even more true: If you really DON’T want to get something done, then ask a dead man to do it.

This turns out to be the major point of the dead man’s test. Naïve behavior analysts sometimes make the mistake of trying to study the lack of behavior. They do this by saying such things as “I want to find out how often Johnny doesn’t have tantrums,” or “How often does Jeffrey refrain from using swear words?”

Dead men are exceptionally good at not using swear words. Studying the lack of cursing, therefore, doesn’t pass the dead man’s test.

There are times in our lives when we wish to emulate dead men. For example, dead men rarely eat sweets, red meat, or fried food. In that respect, I admire dead men and would like to be just like them. They don’t hurt other’s feelings, especially after they’ve been dead for a really long time. And they rarely make big mistakes in the stock market. They don’t appear to be highly conflicted, and don’t seem to worry about small things, like whether or not they forgot to zip up their zipper. The list, obviously, goes on eternally.

The Dead Man’s Test can help us become more effective at what we do, because it stresses the difference between substance and absence. Humans have proven over the millennia to do a better job at adding to their behavioral repertoire than decreasing it. In other words, it is easier to learn new tricks than to rid ourselves of the old ones. So, for example, rather than tell yourself to stop watching TV (dead men can do that), tell yourself to read another chapter in the book you are reading. Rather than tell yourself to stop eating sweets (dead men don’t eat sweets), tell yourself to eat more vegetables. Rather than tell your business partner to stop complaining about her ex-husband (dead men don’t complain), tell her to spend more time talking about novel marketing ideas.

Now you know how to pass the test.