GONE TO THE DOGS

I have written before about anthropomorphisation,  which is the act of ascribing human emotions and forms to things that are not human.

It really shouldn’t be done. People like to think they know what animals are thinking, but we don’t.

A study has just been conducted that would appear to prove this…

Can dogs really look ‘guilty’?

That “guilty look” on a dog’s face is all in the imagination of the human owner, suggests research.

Dog owners have often claimed they can read the expressions of their pets – particularly that tell-tale look when they have done something wrong.

But researchers at a New York college tricked owners into thinking innocent pets had misbehaved – with the owners still claiming to see this guilty look.

The study found that the expression had no relation to the dogs’ behaviour.

Furthermore…

The research, Canine Behaviour and Cognition, looked at how dog owners interpreted their pets’ expressions, when they believed that the dog had stolen and eaten a forbidden treat.

In a series of tests, owners were sometimes given accurate and sometimes false information about whether their dog had stolen the treat.

But the research, published in Behavioural Processes, found that owners’ interpretations of whether their dog looked guilty bore no reliable link with whether the dog had really stolen the treat.

When the owners had been told their dog had misbehaved, they saw this guilty expression, even when the dog had not really done anything wrong.

Where there was any change in the dogs’ expression, it was seen to be a subsequent reflection of the human’s emotions.

The whole story is here.