Pet Owners – Do You Anthropomorphize?

Every dog owner knows the guilty look your pet displays when you come home and find he’s been chewing the table leg, spilled the waste basket, or worse. But is the “guilty look’ actually an expression of true guilty feeling, or something else? Something the owner has evoked by his behavior?

Barnard College researcher Alexandra Horowitz has examined this question, and published her findings in the journal Behavioural Processes. She videotaped 14 dogs’ behavior under various circumstances, and tried to identify the elements that corresponded to what the owner described as a “guilty look”.

The owners were instructed to order their dogs not to eat a tasty treat; they then left the room. Some dogs were then given the forbidden treat, and the owners were invited back into the room. Some of the owners were told their dog had eaten the treat (even if they hadn’t), and others were told their dog had behaved perfectly.

There were no differences in the dogs’ actual behavior - eating or not eating the treat - associated with their having a guilty look. In fact, more such guilt looks were reported in trials when the owners scolded their dogs. This effect of scolding was even more pronounced when the dogs were obedient, i.e. had not eaten the treat, but were scolded anyway.

These results suggest that the so-called “guilty look” isn’t, in fact, due to prior guilty behavior, but is a response to their owner’s behavior on returning to them.

And anthropomorphism? It’s the natural human tendency to interpret animal behavior in human terms. In this case, it includes the attribution of higher-order emotions, such as guilt or remorse, to the animal, when in fact animals most probably don’t possess such emotions. That doesn’t make them any less loveable, of course.