Do animals feel guilt?

[KingstonTodd]

Interesting article I saw in the newspaper today.

"Rob Stein
Washington Post

WASHINGTON–Many dog owners have had this experience: arriving home, they find their pooch looking ashamed, with its head down, ears pulled back, tail tucked between the legs, maybe slinking behind the sofa. Puzzled, they soon find the reason: a favourite pair of shoes chewed to pieces, or perhaps the kitchen garbage can upended.

But is their canine really acting guilty? Or is this an example of people projecting a human emotion onto a four-legged friend?

A new study concludes it is more likely the latter – that the behaviour people interpret as dog guilt is more likely just the animal's reaction to subtle cues from its owner.

"I'm not denying that people have had that experience – I have had it myself," said Alexandra Horowitz, a psychology professor at Barnard College who conducted the study just published in Behavioural Processes. "But I don't think we can say it's because the dogs are showing guilt. I don't think it maps to some inner emotion."

Horowitz conducted the research as part of a broader interest in anthropomorphisms – the tendency people have to ascribe human emotions to animals.

"One of the things that interests me is the disconnect between how scientists and how pet owners refer to the behaviour of animals," Horowitz said. "Within science, anthropomorphisms are verboten. But they seem to be a prevalent method of talking about animals for non-scientists. Even scientists who will speak of the monkeys in their lab by number will go home and talk about their dog feeling spiteful ..."

So Horowitz devised an experiment involving 14 owners and their dogs – six males and eight females, including six mutts, a Brussels griffon, a Tibetan terrier, a cockapoo, a Shih Tzu, a wheaten terrier, two dachshunds and a Labrador retriever.

Horowitz asked each owner to show the dog a biscuit, instruct the dog not to eat it and then leave the room. Horowitz then either allowed the dog to eat the treat or removed it. When the owners returned, those who were told disobedience had occurred scolded their dogs. But only half the owners were told the truth about whether their dog had misbehaved while the other half were misled.

And here is the surprising thing: The dogs that had actually obeyed were just as likely to exhibit one of nine behaviours associated with the "guilty look" – dropping their head, pulling their ears back, avoiding eye contact, rolling over onto their side or back, dropping their tails, quickly wagging a lowered tail, licking their lips, offering a paw, or slinking away.

In fact, Horowitz found that the pooches were most likely to show such behaviours when their owner believed they had disobeyed and scolded them.

"The most guilty look was when the owner scolded an innocent dog. It was a bit surprising."

Horowitz concluded that such behaviour was most likely the result of subtle cues that dogs picked up from their owners that make them anticipate punishment.

"What we call the guilty look overlaps a lot with what is described as submissive behaviour – a posture you might take when you think someone is angry or might punish you," she said.

The dogs most likely to look "guilty" in response to a scolding were those that had gone through obedience training, she said.

"They might learn this is a good look to put on when they see a certain body language or detect a certain tone of voice in their owner," she said.

"I think the reaction is in anticipation of punishment ... It's a subtle but an important difference."

But some researchers said that while the study was well done, they weren't sure of its conclusions.

"I think the take-home message is that a guilty look doesn't necessarily mean the dog did something," said Marc Bekoff at the University of Colorado.

Bekoff noted that research indicates people are fairly accurate at interpreting animals' emotions. "There is very high agreement about the emotions people attribute to animals, and they are correct much of the time."

[kirama]

That was a good article. I have a friend who is an animal behaviorist, and she has told me that dogs have no capability to feel either guilt or respect. They are asocial which means that they do what brings them the greatest satisfaction at the moment, the concepts of 'right and wrong' are not part of their makeup.

She said if people could grasp the reality that dogs always act in their own interests they would have a far easier time training them. She said that 'negative' training is based upon the idea that the dog will either respect you or feel guilty about what it does that you don't like, and as a result stop doing it. Whereas positive training is based upon reinforcing (with a reward) the last behavior that the dog performed. The 'reward' can be a treat, a good scratch behind the ears, or a favorite toy, what ever is most appealing to your dog. The act of repeatedly reinforcing desirable behavior and ignoring undesirable behavior will (according to her) ultimately eliminate or greatly diminish negative behavior. (the reward always has to be more attractive than the satisfaction they derive from a negative behavior).

when people think a dog 'looks or acts guilty' they should observe dog's communicating with each other. The behavior, when used around another dog is called a 'calming behavior' and is exhibited around another dog who is scaring them or suddenly exhibiting hostility.

[lindamarie]

Great article!

The most guilty look was when the owner scolded an innocent dog. It was a bit surprising."

Poor things! That makes me sad. The dog was probably thinking, "what the..???"

Great response kirama!!

OTAY!! I had a dog I believed felt SHAME! As life with him went on through the years, when he passed gas, we would all say, "WHEEEW!"
This poor dog.....for the remainder of his life on earth, when someone said "WHEW!" He'd run in the other room!
One day, I was sitting around a coffee table in the front room with a group of GF's. For some reason, one of them said "WHEW!".....and Toby, lying next to me, got up with his head hung low and ran into the bedroom!!

[kirama]

Originally Posted by lindamarie

OTAY!! I had a dog I believed felt SHAME! As life with him went on through the years, when he passed gas, we would all say, "WHEEEW!"
This poor dog.....for the remainder of his life on earth, when someone said "WHEW!" He'd run in the other room!
One day, I was sitting around a coffee table in the front room with a group of GF's. For some reason, one of them said "WHEW!".....and Toby, lying next to me, got up with his head hung low and ran into the bedroom!!

If you can figure out how you managed that, please let me know because we are thinking of going to the Army-Navy surplus store to get gas masks to have them on hand for when Beck farts, it's bad..I mean really bad, and believe me he exhibits no shame, in fact I think he's kinda proud of himself

[MaxandMe]

do does feel Guilt????????

I think a dog feels like something is wrong by OUR BEHAVIOUR as they read our body language extremely well
so they learn " UH OH" something's up with mom/dad/trainer and respond accordingly: usually head hung low,
possible tail tucked behind legs, slink away etc

i also firmly believe in the Vollhard Positive Reinforcement method for most dogs and like little kids
learn more from praise and take it slower with what they have trouble with.

GUILT? SBD's??? ha!!! max will lay one after another and give us the male attitude of "WHAT?" and lie his head
right back down and go back to sleep. Peanut she's wagging her tail eagerly tooting away happily at times hahhaaaaaaaa
I loved the time Peanut farted so loud while outside going potty she jumped 3ft in the air and tried to run away

IF i were to raise my voice YES my doodles will hang there head low........but i mean if it were a person in this house or on the phone
soooooooo once again i don't think dogs feel guilt, rather they repsond according to how we ACT

dogs do feel love, grief, sadness etc........guilt? hmmm i say no they just feel something is wrong not quite right

[Jac]

I think that it is very superior to assume that humans are the only creatures capable of emotion. Of course dogs feel emotion! Is it the same emotion that HUMANS have labeled? Maybe, maybe not...but they DO feel emotion! I hate it when humans can't understand other creatures so, we put on our superiority ... "king of the jungle", survival-of-the-fittest face and presume that we know it all...phew!
I think that this is like arguing whether there is a heaven...how can we know? So, if we can't know...it is impossible for us to say. All we have is our opinions and experiences...and I have lived with enough dogs over the last few years to say, without a moment's doubt, dogs DO feel emotion. They have emotions equivilent to love, loyalty, happiness, shame, anger, fear, boredom, silliness, compassion, tenderness, sadness, disappointment, expectation, and probably more than humans can even comprehend!

[CharlieBear's Mom]

Charlie stayed with my sister over the weekend....he was his normal happy go lucky self. She did notice him out of the corner of her eye tip toeing across the living room -- head hung low -- peeking out at her. He does this at home and we call it his "I am invisible....you really don't see me walk". Anyway, sure enough she called him over and he had something he shouldn't have in his mouth. I am convinced he has emotions and most definitely knows when he is being naughty even before we know it sometimes!

[tuffystar]

Originally Posted by CharlieBear's Mom

Charlie stayed with my sister over the weekend....he was his normal happy go lucky self. She did notice him out of the corner of her eye tip toeing across the living room -- head hung low -- peeking out at her. He does this at home and we call it his "I am invisible....you really don't see me walk". Anyway, sure enough she called him over and he had something he shouldn't have in his mouth. I am convinced he has emotions and most definitely knows when he is being naughty even before we know it sometimes!

I have had the same experience with all of my dogs in my life. We had a poodle that took all of my sister's Hershey kisses one by one and unwrapped them and shoved the wrappers under the bathroom rug. When my sister was yelling at me for taking her candy (I was stunned because I did not know she had any candy) our dog walked by smelling of chocolate. Mom followed her and when she saw mom watching her she slunk away before mom said a word. Luckily the dog survived the chocolate, mom, and my sister that day. I know they feel something like guilt!!!!

[kirama]

I think that 'something like guilt' is awareness that they got busted, or are about to. A dog trained not to chew your shoes is going to exhibit some real pronounced behavior when you catch them munching on your best pair of shoes, but that behavior is identified by a number of distinct mannerisms, slinking away, tail between legs, licking lips, avoidance of eye contact- all things that help the dog out of a tight spot with another dog.

Guilt is slightly different...When I was little I stuck my foot out and tripped my brother, he fell really hard and got a bloody nose- I am not going to tell you how many decades ago this happened, but to this day I feel guilty about it. I feel remorse about doing it, I regret having done it...I don't think dog's have that capacity, and I love dogs more than I love most people, so this is in no way a slam on the psyche of a dog, but merely an awareness of their psychological makeup that I think enables me to relate to them on their terms.

The same analogy could be applied to respect vs. fear- and that's the one that I think leads to big problems with some people training dogs, they get their head stuck on 'respect' and really believe that a dog has the ability to 'respect' them, and it can end up with these people doing all sorts of things that end up making their dog afraid of them in a misguided attempt to instill respect.

Do my dogs love me? Of course they do! I feed them, pet them, protect them, play with them. They understand that life is good around me and neat things happen when they please me...

[Jac]

It is an interesting debate, Lynne, for certain...but I think that there are two problems with logic here...scientifically, no proof exists that dogs feel "human" emotions...and emotionally, dog owners believe that their experiences prove that dogs do feel "human" emotions.

I just think that is it very smug of humans to assume that we know. We can't know. Your proof is in the action/reward theory that trainers use...and science measures...so it is understandable...but I do think it is flawed. Sometimes all we have is empherical evidence of something...as I mentioned...many similar debates flare around religion, beliefs, even politics...but there are certainly two sides to the arguments and both sides believe with absolute certainty...but other than the motivations of action/reaction/reward/consequence, we can't know. If children did not vocalize their emotions, we could have this same debate over their ability to feel human emotions...is it something they are born with or do they develop it over time? Well, because a child can tell us, we are quite certain that they are born with it...but we can't know about other animals.

I just don't agree with the argument that they don't have emotions...or that their emotions are tied purely to the reward or consequence of their ability to display the emotion...I think it is very smug to assume that our ability to love can be pure, but that a dog only loves if there is something in it for them...I just don't buy it...if that was true, how do you explain those dogs I recently read about that will run along side their owner and keel over and die from heat stroke? I can't believe that they are afraid to stop running when they are dying...no, I think it has more to do with their love and devotion to their human family. That just makes more sense. Human sense.

[MaxandMe]

Alright y'all got me to thinking hhahhaaa So here is just an outloud thought not intended for anyone
but rather what i was thinking after reading this post and being with my doodles


Okay I DO SAY dogs feel emotions.......how else could they give inconditional love

or ever see a dog grieve a person in the family that is gone, or another pet that died? I have

training which i believe while it does reinforce behaviours.......if you could see max's happy dance when i get out his
training collar and he knows we're doing to do public training and also see the tons of kisses he gives me.
i'd say that's an emotion.

I've seen fear in a dog.....i've also seen protection and/or a dog angry at another person or dog they believe
is going to cause me harm. I'd say that's an emotion.

i've seen the UH UH i am busted and how they slink away quietly trying to avoid eye contact
I've also seen WHEN MAX AND PEANUT has sarcoptic mange and couldn't be held, hugged like usual for a MONTH!
YOU should have been here the day we could hold hug and love them ......i'd say there was some emotion on their part
they came to LIFE.

somethings may be learned via training: but if dogs didn't emotions would we have them as pets?
meaning no emotion would like have a lawn statue ornament.

i also remember max grieving Beau's leaving ...max barely ate, didn't play, laid around for a whole 3 weeks
no amount of hugs, kisses NOR any food /treats , even family/friends he loves, NOT even Peanut could get him happy
he grieved sadly for 3 weeks.......peanut for some reason only grieved one week
THAT's called sadness ..........that is an emotion NOT learned, not taught in training...that was raw emotion.

[kirama]

Maybe I didn't explain myself well. I did not say that dog's don't experience emotion, of course they do! They also seem able to empathize (react to the emotional state of people). What I said is that I don't think dog's have the ability to experience 'remorse' which is what defines guilt. As far as love- I think dog's are more rational than people about the reasons they 'love' a person. They love us because we play with them, care for them, feed them, etc. People are really bizarre because they fall in love for very silly reasons like physical appearance- and then spend years wondering why the object of their affection failed to live up to their expectations lol

[KingstonTodd]

I guess this discussion has headed to where another article I read would be appropriate. It relates a dogs emotional level to that of a 2 yr old child. Certainly old enough to feel happy, sad, love, wants, etc... but guilt is tough. It implies a sense of "right" and "wrong" which I think is pretty complicated. Does a 2 yr old know they did something "wrong" or simply that a specific action gets them in trouble. The artile is about mourning, but it makes the point about emotional potential of dogs.

Here's the article.

"Do dogs mourn? By Naomi Kane,

Do dogs mourn? There is no question in any dog owner’s mind that their dog is happy to see them and enjoys their company and is sad when they leave. I had a dog that figured out a strategy to eat my lunch. She ran to the front door barking, and I and all the other dogs went to check who was there.
Meanwhile, the original barker had climbed up on my chair and was happily finishing my sandwich. Any dog owner would agree: that dog was thinking, remembering and planning. Scientists are catching up to dog owners; studies have been done and surveys taken, and the verdict seems to be that animals do have emotions and intelligence.

Charles Darwin described animal emotion, but until recently, only the “higher” animals – that is, human – could be considered to have feelings. Researchers kept trying to explain animal behaviour without animal emotion or thought and came up with some pretty weird explanations for the behaviour they were seeing. Lay people could look at a dog and see sadness, happiness or jealousy. A scientist would call that anthropomorphizing instinctive behaviours. According to the old science model, a dog that is subdued and won’t eat after a loved one has passed away is simply reacting to the change in routine and different smells, but nearly anybody would describe that dog as being sad.

Although dogs and other animals have been characterized as machine-like automatons that respond to outside stimuli with instinctive responses but no will or cognition, this kind of thinking is changing as scientists find more and more similarities in animal brains and human brains.

Other animals have some of the same structures in their brains as human animals; those areas of the brain release the same chemicals under the same conditions. The limbic system is responsible for emotions and feelings such as anger, fear, love, hate, sadness and joy, as well as some functions of memory and personal identity. We share the limbic system with all the other complex vertebrates.

How much do they understand?
Humans tend to assume that dogs and other animals don’t understand things because they do not speak our language and haven’t built cathedrals and computers. In all the literature about dogs, it is common to see the words, “They don’t understand.” I think it is fair to say that dogs don’t understand how to cook or read a book, but they do understand how to make me open a door. We suppose that dogs don’t understand death because they cannot talk about it.

Animals have been dying since the beginning of time – killing and being killed, dying of diseases, dying of old age. I think they may know about death.

Twice over the years when a dog has passed away in my house, all the other dogs came and gave their old mate a sniff, then walked away. They appeared to understand very clearly that the other dog was no longer living. Of course, the dogs didn’t write a paper on how they felt and they didn’t light candles and ask for black collars, but they where subdued for a few days and clearly missed their friend. Not exactly like Greyfriars Bobby, the Skye Terrier who guarded his owner’s grave for 14 years, only leaving the spot for food, but still an indication that they where affected by the loss.

What do some experts say?
I asked well-known author and psychologist Dr. Stanley Coren if he believes dogs mourn. He said, “The mind of a dog is approximately equal to a human two year old.

They have basic emotions such as fear, anger and love. Love is a basic emotion; withdrawal of love will cause grief and loss. Dogs are capable of love and therefore capable of feeling the loss of a loved one. The degree to which they will express that emotion depends on the degree of social interaction and the individual dog.

“When ‘Odin’ my Flat-coated Retriever passed away, his buddy ‘Dancer,’ the Nova Scotia Duck Toller, acted despondent and would go and check the four places in the house where Odin was likely to be, then go to the middle of the room and whine. So I managed his grief the way you would a small child. I filled his mind with other things by taking him to work with me for two weeks. Just so you all know I am not being airy-fairy here, dogs produce oxytocin, one of the main chemicals associated with love in humans in what people would call affectionate situations such as being petted and praised.”

Frequent Dogs in Canada contributor, best-selling author and dog behaviourist Jean Donaldson answered the question in her usual comprehensive style. “It seems implausible that dogs, who bond so strongly, would not feel really bad when someone they’re close to disappears. Now, whether they have the accompanying cognitions that so complicate human grief is something I’m less convinced of. I know people whose dogs have struggled with the loss of a family member (people and dogs), becoming depressed, anxious, lost and rudderless. And I can see how this could be compounded by changes in routine brought on by the grieving process of remaining family members.”

So it seems the experts and the rest of us are on the same page when it comes to our dogs and their feelings. We know that we feel terrible when a beloved pet dies, and it seems our pets feel the same way when somebody they love passes away. The human/animal bond is a two-way street: Our dogs don’t just have behaviours we interpret as affection because we are needy human beings; our dogs truly do reciprocate our love and feel the joy and sorrow of true friendship.

[Jac]

Todd, this is an excellent article, thank you for posting it.

You know, I have not one whit of science comprehension (obviously) so my opinions about is come solely from my observations...but I live in quite a good laboratory, where I can observe many, many things...and since so much of my experiences and life is in very close proximity to my dogs, and since understanding them is vital to me, I observe them very closely. From my observations I have learned many things that can only be attributed to emotions that we identify as love, devotion, fear, confusion, longing, lonliness, sorrow, happiness, anticipation, and more.

I think that the most compelling evidence of a dog's love and understanding of death comes when a female dog whelps puppies, one lives for a time and then dies. If the mother sees the puppy die, she smells it, licks it and tries to revive it...then she looks for it after it has been removed. If she doesn't see it die, she searches for it. We had puppies die and I saw, in every instance, the mother dog mourning for her puppy. The first time it happened to Lexie, she spent days searching for her puppy...she saw it die, she smelled it, licked it, and when I would try to cover it up or take it away, she came right to me, nosing the covering off the puppy so that she could lick it some more. Then, finally, when we buried the pup, Lexie spent days searching...literally, she would go from one corner of the yard to the other (a very large yard), smelling, sniffing the air, digging around...it was so sad. After about 3 days, she accepted the loss.

I know that many of you have seen how your dog responds to you when you cry.

One more story...a woman called me...she had lost her service dog to cancer. She went to take the meds back to the vet (they give them to needy pet owners) and she wheeled her chair into a very full waiting area of the vet clinic. Many dogs, many people there...she noticed that a beautiful golden dog was winding its way through the crowd, came directly to her, and laid her head on this woman's lap. That dog turned out to be one of my Goldendoodle pups! I believe that he (the dog) must have known that this woman was in pain...because he ignored all of the others and went directly to this woman.

What I believe is that dogs not only feel emotion, they also sense much more than we do...but this is another topic.

[Raleighsmom]

That was a great article Todd....and Jac?....thanks a heap for that last paragraph that made me cry......