Posted on June 14, 2009 by: WayCoolDogs

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A recent study on the communication skills and visual attention of dogs has uncovered the origins of the “look of guilt” in dogs, published in the “Canine Behavior and Cognitive” special issue of Elsevier’s Behavioral Processes.  Prepared by Alexandra Horowitz, Assistant Professor from Barnard College in New York, the study shows that the look of guilt many dogs have which causes their punishment or reprimanding actually originates from their owners. It has nothing to do with the dog actually being innocent or guilty of the accused deed.

The dog study set up conditions where the owner of the dog was purposely misinformed whether or not the dog had actually committed the proposed offense of stealing treats. The results showed that what dog owners considered their “dog’s guilty look” was not due to the animal being guilty, but instead what the owner wanted to see in the dog’s body language when they “thought” their dog  had done the wrong-doing. And this “guilty look” had nothing at all to do whether the dog was innocent or guilty of the stealing act, only what the owner thought they had done. Overall: During the dog study what the owners were told about their dog’s actions did not always correlate with what really happened (ex: dogs who ate a treat were told they had not, and vice versa).

ADMONISHMENT OF DOG’S GUILT

What actually caused the look of guilt in the study dog was the accusing tone and body language of the misinformed owners, those with preconceived ideas who thought their dog was guilty. What was found out was that the dogs who had not eaten the treat, yet were scolded by their owner, had a tendency to look guiltier than those who had actually eaten the treat. Therefore, the look of guilt was instead a response to the owner’s behavior toward the dog, not what they were supposedly to have done. What is important about this dog study is the light it sheds on very important human behavior, not dog behavior.

How many times has someone been labeled as being guilty only to find out later through DNA they were instead innocent? We see what we want to see, and if we have labeled someone as guilty before the evidence is in, that is what we see. Studies in the field of anthropomorphism have compared animal behavior to human behavior, resulting in serious findings of false  interpretation of animal behavior using the same terms as human actions—such as guilt or remorse in an animal as if it were a child or adult.

The natural prejudices of humans are usually applied to the domesticated dog and its behavior, yet as we apply more and more research to the dogs and its cognitive skills, we are finding out that there is more human-like forms of reasoning within this species as compared to what people actually know and do objectively.

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