A moment of psychology awesomeness...

I was doing some reading and found this article online. It discusses if a dog feels what we define as "guilt" after performinga "naughty behavior"

The article quotes a study (yay studies!!) where a researcher observed 'some' (this article doesn't state how many) dogs and owners to further expand knowledge of anthropomorphism ( wiki definition: any attribution of human characteristics to non human animals) and how humans place their "emotions" onto the animal.

Experiment set up:

• Dog + owner + researcher all in room.
• Owner puts a piece of food on the floor in front of dog and says "leave it".
• Owner leaves.
• Owner returns. Researcher tells owner if the dog ate it or did not. The dogs of the owners who were told their dog DID NOT eat the treat showed innocent behavior. The dogs of the owners who were told their dog DID eat the treat displayed "guilty" behaviors. These include rolling on side, lack of eye contact, head down. etc.

The kicker?!?! The researcher lied about the behaviors to some of the owners. If a dog ate the treat- the researcher would say they didn't and vice versa.

The study states (and I concur- since I am such an expert in this subject. heh ) that the behaviors displayed were not due to the ACTUAL outcome of the treat-eating-ness (I created a word!) but due to the way the owner behaved.

Great excerpt from the article:

She was demonstrating her full repertoire of “appeasement” behaviors in response to her owner’s behavior toward her. Appeasement behaviors are used to convey non-threatening intentions to others. In dog land, they work really well to turn off aggressive displays: “Don’t hurt me!” “I’m a lowly meek little harmless thing!” “Back off, you’re acting weird!”

Dogs display them when feeling threatened, to attempt to ward off aggression directed at them. Some dogs turn on these behaviors more readily than others. Denver seems to be able to turn on her appeasement repertoire pretty readily. Her owner’s admonition, “Did you do this?” was fairly mild, yet prompted a very dramatic submissive grin and tons of appeasement. Other dogs only show this behavior if being really chewed out by their owners.

For further information on the study I googled "2009 Barnard College Dog Guilty" and came up with an article that gave a few more details about the study:

The study involved 14 dogs and their 14 owners. The six male dogs and eight female dogs included six mongrels and eight purebreds — a Brussels griffon, two dachshunds, a Tibetan terrier, a cockapoo, a shi-tzu, a wheaten terrier and a Labrador retriever.

This study sheds new light on anthropomorphism — the natural human tendency to interpret animal behavior in human terms, Horowitz said. Anthropomorphism involves comparing 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.

After a little more research I found the abstract of the research paper from the actual lab - Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard, that conducted the experiment:

Anthropomorphisms are regularly used by owners in describing their dogs. Of interest is whether attributions of understanding and emotions to dogs are sound, or are unwarranted applications of human psychological terms to non-humans. One attribution commonly made to dogs is that the "guilty look" shows that dogs feel guilt at doing a disallowed action. In the current study, this anthropomorphism is empirically tested. The behaviors of fourteen domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) were videotaped over a series of trials and analyzed for elements that correspond to an owner-identified "guilty look." Trials varied the opportunity for dogs to disobey an owner's command not to eat a desirable treat while the owner was out of the room, and varied the owners' knowledge of what their dogs did in their absence. The results revealed no difference in behaviors associated with the guilty look. By contrast, more such behaviors were seen in trials when owners scolded their dogs. The effect of scolding was more pronounced when the dogs were obedient, not disobedient. These results indicate that a better description of the so-called guilty look is that it is a response to owner cues, rather than that it shows an appreciation of a misdeed.

Also, I found the proper citation to reference all this information. Phew.

Horowitz, A. (2009). Disambiguating the "guilty look": Salient prompts to a familiar dog behaviour. Behavioural Processes, 81, 447-452

Does that mean that when we see our dog smiling and think they are happy- they aren't? Is raising the lips in an upward motion just a behavior that we attribute to a smile? I don't know honestly.

I want to believe that a lot of the emotions we see in our dogs are genuinely there and not us putting out feelings onto the animal.

However- in many situations I DO feel we put our emotions out there and the dog is behaving based on what his environment and instincts dictate him to do.

Anyways, I thought that was an interesting read. I thought I would share.

To end this, enjoy a cute video of a Brussels I found on youtube!