Ask any dog owner and they'll tell you that dogs can feel guilty, but
what does science say? Julie Hecht of Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest
did the experiment to find out:
Given that so many dog owners report that they believe that dogs
who have broken a rule act guilty even before the dog’s transgression
is discovered, and given that owners report that they are likely to
scold their dogs less following the display of guilty behaviors, it
stands to reason that dogs’ “guilty look” may just
be a learned response. If scolded, a guilty look might simply serve
to reduce the duration of the negative social interaction.
Keeping this in mind, the researchers designed an experiment to
answer two questions. First, would dogs who had misbehaved in their
owners’ absences behave differently when greeting their owners
than dogs who had not misbehaved?
Second, would owners be able to determine, upon entering a room
and relying solely on dog greeting behavior, whether or not their dogs
had actually transgressed?
Jason G. Goldman of Scientific American's The Thoughtful Animal blog
has the results:
here.
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