Does this dog look guilty to you?
The look of guilt that many dogs appear to display could be in the owner’s imagination A study conducted by Alexandra Horowitz, Assistant Professor from Barnard College in New York, showed that the human propensity to attribute a “guilty look” to a dog did not relate with whether the dog was actually guilty or not. Demonstrating that pet owners’ belief that they can read their dogs’ “body language” is often entirely unfounded.
As part of the study, the pet owners were asked to leave the room after instructing their pooch not to go near the tempting treat left within their grasp. In some trials prior to calling the owner back into the room, Horowitz gave the dog a treat. The owners were either told that their dog disobeyed them and ate the treat or that they behaved impeccably. What the owners were told, however, often did not correlate with reality.
“One of the things that interests me is the disconnect between how scientists refer to the behavior of animals and how pet owners refer to the behavior of animals,” Horowitz said.
“Within science, anthropomorphisms are verboten. But they seem to be a prevalent method of talking about animals for non-scientists. Even scientists who will speak of the monkeys in their lab by number will go home and talk about their dog feeling spiteful, for example. I wanted to test some of these.”
The results demonstrated that the behaviour associated with a “guilty look” had little to do with whether the dogs had actually disobeyed their master. In fact, the dogs mostly appeared ‘guilty’ if being reprimanded by their owner for stealing the treat- even more so if they were part of the innocent group. Thus, a dog’s guilty look is a response to the owner’s actions and not necessarily related to them having the feeling of guilt.
Some researchers however, said that despite the study being conducted well they remained indeterminate how conclusive it was.
“I think this is a very good, important study,” said Professor Marc Bekoff, who teaches animal behaviour at the University of Colorado. “But I’m not convinced this is the end of the story. I don’t think it puts the nail in the coffin that dogs don’t feel guilty and we can’t use that behavior to indicate guilt.” However, he said “The study involved too few dogs, and too little was known about the background of the animals or their owners to know exactly how to interpret the findings”.
Images courtesy of: Jennifer Appleton
Horowitz, A. (2009). Disambiguating the “guilty look”: Salient prompts to a familiar dog behaviour Behavioural Processes, 81 (3), 447-452 DOI: 10.1016/j.beproc.2009.03.014
Other Elements articles in which you might be interested:
What people are saying