Perhaps every dog owner has, at one time or another come
home and discovered their favorite shoes or even the entire couch destroyed by
the family dog at some point during the day.What person wouldn’t be a bit angry?So you scold the dog who responds with
a very guilty look; hanging his head, licking his lips and maybe even rolling
over on his back.You take this
look of guilt as a sure sign that he not only understands what he has done
wrong but he is actually feeling remorse, right?
What if I told you that guilt is a higher order emotion and
that dogs are not capable of feeling it?And that you are falling victim to anthropomorphism, the act of putting
human emotions on animals.
Dogs live completely in the here and now.They cannot make a connection between a
behavior and a consequence unless the consequence is delivered right when the
behavior occurs.If Rusty grabs
the steak off the counter and no one sees him do it there is nothing you can
do.If you were to scold him now,
he would connect the scolding with whatever he was doing at that moment.
Well, what about that guilty look?The look we humans perceive as “guilt” is actually a
combination of submissive gestures and pacifying, or calming signals meant to
appease your anger.In the dog
pack once a dog has submitted, the reprimand will cease.In your case, if you continue scolding
your dog, he may try to send you more calming signals such as lip licking,rolling over and even the ultimate
submissive gesture, urinating.
A study was done at Barnard College in New York.Dr. Alexandra Horowitz PhD tested 14
dogs and their owners for the owners interpretation of the dogs so-called
“guilty look”.The dogs were not
to touch the forbidden treats but the owners were asked to leave the room while
some dogs were given the forbidden treat.When the owners returned they were told whether or not their dogs had
eaten the forbidden treat, some owners were given misinformation and told that
their dog had eaten the treat even when it hadn’t.What Dr. Horowitz found was that the “guilty look” had
little to do with whether the dog ate the treat.The “guilty look” was most prominent when owners were upset
at their dogs for eating the treat, whether or not they had actually done it.
