While many dog owners contend their pooch is a great judge of character, new research at The University of Western Ontario shows dogs may not actually attribute good or bad intentions to people, but rather may simply be quick learners.
The research, entitled “Can dogs (Canis familiaris) detect human deception?” is being published by the journal Behavioural Processes.
The researchers – Bill Roberts of Western’s Department of Psychology, Huron University College students Mark Petter and Evanya Musolino, and Huron professor Mark Cole – wanted to know if dogs can detect deceit and learn if one person is helpful, while another person might lead them astray.
In two experiments, dogs could choose between two buckets, one of which contained a food reward, and another that was empty. In some trials, a person who acted as a cooperator stood behind the bucket that contained food and cued the dog to come to that bucket. If it did come, it was allowed to eat the food in the bucket.
In other trials, a different person, acting as a deceiver, stood behind the empty bucket and cued the dog to come to it. If the dog came to the bucket and found no food, the deceiver retrieved the food from the other bucket and pretended to eat it. If the dog ignored the deceiver and went instead to the other bucket, it was allowed to eat the food in the bucket.
Initially the dogs approached the cued bucket when both the cooperator and deceiver were present. However, after being tricked by the deceiver, many times dogs would approach the opposite bucket or simply refuse to go and look in the bucket when the deceiver was present.
While dogs still continue to approach either human most of the time no matter whether it was the cooperator or deceiver giving cues to the dog. The researchers believe this was because dogs did not attribute intention to the humans involved.
To determine if dogs learned this discrimination because they attributed deceptive motives to the deceiver, a third experiment removed humanness from the task by using black and white boxes as the ‘cooperator’ and ‘deceiver.’ Dogs discriminated between boxes as well as they did between people.
This research relates directly to a topic called “theory of mind.” Hotly debated by researchers for many years, theory of mind refers to the ability to attribute mental states such as intents and desires to oneself and others and to understand that the intents and desires of others may be different from one’s own.
The results suggest dogs do not have theory of mind, but instead used humans as cues to the presence or absence of a food reward, and quickly learned if someone would not help provide them with food.
Roberts disappointed many dog lovers with earlier research that showed, contrary to the example set by Lassie, dogs do not seem inclined to seek help when their master is injured.
Roberts is also working on a new study on metacognition in dogs. Metacognition has been described as “knowing about knowing.” Humans tend to know whether we know something. Roberts will focus on whether dogs also have the ability to understand what they know and do not know.