The “guilty look” in dogs! [from a new angle]

In 2010, I lived in Budapest, and when not eating sauerkraut or mispronouncing simple Hungarian phrases such as “excuse me” I conducted a study investigating what owners describe as the “guilty look” in dogs. 

Márta Gácsi and Ádám Miklósi of the Family Dog Project were my super supervisors. Fast forward a mere two years later, and the study is now published in Applied Animal Behaviour Science -- just to give you a sense of the speed of science vs. the rest of the world.

This is not the first time the “guilty look” in dogs has been explored experimentally. Back in the late 1970s, Vollmer investigated the “guilty look” with a dog indicted for shredding paper in the owner’s absence. More recently, Alexandra Horowitz, whose Dog Cognition Lab I manage, found that dogs produced the guilty look when scolded and that this look of “guilt” was not indicative of an appreciation of a misdeed. Want more details? Check out earlier posts: 

• "Guilt" Part 1 - Is Denver the dog really guilty?

• "Guilt" Part 2 - "She greeted me showing guilty behavior! She gave herself away!"

This is why the qualifier in my title — from a new angle — is important. Our study investigated the "guilty look" in a particular context that many many many many many many dog owners talk about.

It goes something like this: If you suggest that the guilty look is a product of owner scolding and not that the dog understands its misdeed (per Vollmer's and Horowitz’s research), most owners respond with, “Uhhhhh... Okaaay....”

http://knit.vibegrrl.com/

Then comes the sideways smirk and raised “I got you” eyebrows, “But one day I came home and didn’t know Mr. Pumpkin had gotten in the trash, and he looked guilty EVEN BEFORE I found the trash all over the floor!"

AHA! GOTCHA! http://sguforums.com/index.php?topic=6855.15

Yes, that conversation. So our “guilty look” study explored that anecdote: That dogs are said to look "guilty" even before owners discover the misdeed.

That's where I'll end and Scientific American Blogger, Jason Goldman, will take over in Do Dogs Feel Guilty? where he recently summarized our study on The Thoughtful Animal.

References 

Hecht, J., Miklósi, Á., Gácsi., M., 2012. Behavioral assessment and owner perceptions of behaviors associated with guilt in dogs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science