Think about what happens when you get home from a long day and you find a chewed up shoe, or a big hole dug in the backyard. Your dog looks at you with those loving puppy-dog eyes, slouches away from you, and looks guilty right? Wrong.
A new study came out that revealed the origins of that “guilty look” in dogs. And what scientists uncovered is that it is you prompting that look in your dog.
The Barnard College study on “Canine Behaviour and Cognition,” conducted by Assistant Professor Alexandra Horowitz, revealed that humans see that “guilty look” in dogs, whether the dogs committed a punishable offense or not. Though the study is clear to point out that this does not mean dogs cannot feel guilt.
During the study, dog parents were asked to leave the room after ordering their dogs not to eat a tasty dog treat. While the owner was away, some dogs were given the treats to eat by Horowitz. During the trials, when the dog parents returned to the room, they were told that their dog had eaten the forbidden treat, or in other cases, they were told their dog had behaved properly and left the treat alone. What the parents were told often did not correlate with what really happened.
The study concludes, “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.”
It’s an interesting study that touches on the tendency of people to associate dog behaviors to human reactions. So, your dog may or may not have chewed up your shoe, but either way, he isn’t actually looking guilty or showing remorse because of it.
