What really prompts the dog's "guilty look"
June 11, 2009
What dog owner has not come home to a broken vase or other valuable items and a guilty-looking dog slouching around the house? By ingeniously setting up conditions where the owner was misinformed as to whether their dog had really committed an offense, Alexandra Horowitz, Assistant Professor from Barnard College in New York, uncovered the origins of the “guilty look” in dogs in the recently published “Canine Behaviour and Cognition” Special Issue of Elsevier’s Behavioural Processes.
Horowitz was able to show that the human tendency to attribute a “guilty look” to a dog was not due to whether the dog was indeed guilty. Instead, people see ‘guilt’ in a dog’s body language when they believe the dog has done something it shouldn’t have - even if the dog is in fact completely innocent of any offense.
During the study, owners were asked to leave the room after ordering their dogs not to eat a tasty treat. While the owner was away, Horowitz gave some of the dogs this forbidden treat before asking the owners back into the room. In some trials the owners were told that their dog had eaten the forbidden treat; in others, they were told their dog had behaved properly and left the treat alone. What the owners were told, however, often did not correlate with reality.
Whether the dogs' demeanor included elements of the "guilty look" had little to do with whether the dogs had actually eaten the forbidden treat or not. Dogs looked most “guilty” if they were admonished by their owners for eating the treat. In fact, dogs that had been obedient and had not eaten the treat, but were scolded by their (misinformed) owners, looked more “guilty” than those that had, in fact, eaten the treat. Thus the dog’s guilty look is a response to the owner’s behavior, and not necessarily indicative of any appreciation of its own misdeeds.
This study sheds new light on the natural human tendency to interpret animal behavior in human terms. Anthropomorphisms compare animal behavior to human behavior, and if there is some superficial similarity, then the animal behavior will be interpreted in the same terms as superficially similar human actions. This can include the attribution of higher-order emotions such as guilt or remorse to the animal.
The editor of the special issue, Clive D.L. Wynne of the Department of Psychology, University of Florida, explained, “this is a remarkably powerful demonstration of the need for careful experimental designs if we are to understand the human-dog relationship and not just reify our natural prejudices about animal behavior.” He pointed out that dogs are the oldest domesticated species and have a uniquely intimate role in the lives of millions of people. Recent research on dogs has indicated more human-like forms of reasoning about what people know than has been demonstrated even in chimpanzees.
Source: Elsevier
Feb 07, 2010
Is this "guilt" scenario because the dog actually feels guilt at knowing the owner will be upset, or because the dog has been conditioned to understand the owner will be upset with it for the action and thus expects to be admonished?
I have an inclination toward the latter, because although these things have occured, many times I or the owner have not even attempted to correlate the incident to the dog and thus not given it any admonishment whatsoever. Interesting.
How is this any different from how humans learn what is right or wrong and their learned behaviours of how to deal with the consequences of having done something that will upset others?
Maybe they are not at the level where they will feel guilt for [b]not[/b] doing something ,as humans are wont to do, but can realise if they do something they have been conditioned to beleive is bad they will behave so as to minimise the fallout (e.g. slouching and looking guilty to show their subservience).
As simonsez they display this behaviour without any reaction at times.
However, once, he had an accident (the stinky kind) and he did not greet me at the door, instead he was "hiding" in the back of the kitchen. He was not admonished--and never has been, because he does not do this except when he's sick, but he exhibited the "slinky dog" or "guilty look" when I found him.
Another time he did not greet me at the door. Instead, he was downstairs, and the kitchen garbage was strewn about upstairs. Again, slinky, guilty doggie.
In neither case did I express any body language for the dog to pick up--he was in a completely different room when I returned (which is highly unusual in itself.)
Dogs have feelings. They may not be as advanced as a human's, but dogs--and many other higher mammals obviously have feelings, and they can exhibit them in a variety of ways.
There are plenty of people who believe there is "some truth" to astrology, too. They point out that it is "right" some of the time, and don't seem to be too concerned when it's "wrong". An insensitive or overly-imaginative owner is prone to the same kinds of wish fulfillment.
Not to mention that dogs are smart enough to fool people sometimes, if they choose.
Dogs certainly know the difference between behavior acceptable to their owners and behavior unacceptable to their owners (humans would say right and wrong). Dogs are much more cognitively complex than "scientists" prefer to believe.