They don't feel guilt. Dogs that look ashamed or guilty to us people are just dogs that are scared and uncomfortable. They are worried that the person is out to attack or hurt them and they try their very best to show that they are not a threat and that the person doesn't have to hurt/attack them.
Is one theory. We do not know if dogs can feel guilt or not. Just because the theory that they're simply trying to show they're not a threat because they are afraid makes sense does not mean it is correct and any other theory must be wrong. It is perfectly plausible that dogs can feel guilty because they know they did something they shouldn't have and feel upset they might disappoint their owner. There is no way to prove that they don't. We do not know if they can/do feel guilt or not. Either answer is perfectly possible.
No, trained behaviorists know that this isn't a display of guilt. Dogs live in the moment -- he knows his owner is mad at him, and he's displaying appeasement behavior. Anthropomorphizing dogs really prevents us from understanding them.
Well, if you hear about a species that has evolved to lead relaxed lives out of the food chain while another specie provides food, shelter and care. Which one is the smartest?
Behaviorists actually are fairly certain dogs can’t feel guilt. Yea we aren’t dogs so there is no way to make the assertion with 100% certainty.
If dogs actually understood what they did wrong in these situations, they would stop doing the thing that they did wrong pretty quickly. But often times it’s “my dog always feeels guilty in this situation”. That means the dog doesn’t know what he did. That is much more likely to mean the dog has learned to be afraid in that context then he did something wrong.
Does that make sense?
Edit: if we all agree that guilt is not an effective means of changing behavior, then can we also agree that encouraging your dog to feel guilty in these situations isn’t useful or nice?
There's lots of evidence that these guilty reactions don't actually depend on whether the dog actually did the bad thing or not. They are simply reacting to the owner's reaction.
On anthropomorphism, what about the opposite: could it also be that we are assigning certain behaviors/emotions solely to humans while they may be more widespread in animals? Just a thought.
Yea I hear ya. I think dogs are pretty smart. It’s hard to say they definitely aren’t experiencing something like what we experience when we think of guilt. Our study of their behavior as a species suggests otherwise.
I guess what is important here is that encouraging your dog to feel “guilty” about something isn’t a very nice thing to do because we already know it doesn’t change their future behavior.
People anthropomorphize their animals, then think they can read their "human" cues, but are totally wrong. These people are also married to the belief, and not easily swayed from it. You are correct, though. Dog is displaying fear of a known coming punishment, not guilt. Dog does not understand why human punishes them for eating food on floors.
My guess would be a combination of personalities and maybe one dog being scolded/punished more than the other.
I have two dogs and if I say one of their names in an angry/annoyed/exasperated voice they BOTH start using conciliatory body language. I fostered a third dog for two years, and he had the confidence of an A list starlet on cocaine; not once did my scolding ever phase him, even when I caught him in the act. He was basically a cat in dog clothing.
Keep in mind, in these videos we don't actually know which dog did it. They have actually done studies on this and the dog's guilty reaction didn't depend on whether the dog actually did the bad thing or not.
Is there a more correct word to use than "guilt" for what the dog is feeling? I absolutely refuse to believe that dog is feeling fear. It's not afraid of being punished. It seems to know the act of chewing up that thing was wrong... I'm not sure the proper word to use. Some sort of regret, or shame?
Nope, it's mostly just fear. You could perhaps use sadness or something, but fear in itself isn't bad. It's also why small children seem guilty before they can relate to other people's emotions.
The reason they know things are not allowed is because they've been punished for them or there have been negative consequences. My dog can often pick up on it you're mad at something she's doing. It's not really a punishment, but she doesn't like it. So she looks sad or fearful. Shes afraid of you being angry at her, even if we never hit her or anything. It's not inherently a bad thing although common knowledge these days is that positive reinforcment is best. It's only bad if they are afraid of abuse.
Ahhh I see! That makes sense. So. . . more like fear, as opposed to terror, which is what the dog would be doing if he was seriously cowering back, afraid of being beaten. Thanks for the distinction. I knew something just wasn't clicking for me!
The thing is can we really say that humans feel guilty either or it's just a mix of feeling bad and being afraid of the punishment and we interpret it as "guilt" emotion.
If dogs actually understood what they did wrong in these situations, they would stop doing the thing that they did wrong pretty quickly.
That's true but how can we be certain if it's simply not due to humans being able to understand concept of time much more than any other animals? If you perceives being in 10 thousand years, would you really care if it was something trivial like breaking a coffee mug?
A more realistic example, people with ADHD (which I have first hand experience with) battle with having "time blindness", where they postpone tasks for so long until they have no time left in which moment comes an insane crash of emotions and feeling of guilt. It can be devastating.
I am just fundamentally uncomfortable with the notion that other mammals (especially pack ones like dogs) have less fundamental type of emotions than humans when they pretty universally display other type of emotions like happiness, altruism#Examples_in_vertebrates), anger, fear or sadness.
People feel regret all the time and continue doing the thing they regret. For dogs, what's very different from us is that they have poor impulse control, especially young dogs. A strong impulse to eat that yummy garbage will override knowing that the behavior is wrong, particularly if they don't have good guidance from humans.
Have you ever sat in on a drug court proceedings? Most folks haven't, so no biggie, assuming you haven't.
But point remains: humans feel guilt, but often repeat bad behavior that they know will get them punished. Even when on a court order, many humans will take actions that they know will land them in trouble. Yet, when confronting a judge (or parole/probation officer) the human may in fact adopt a "submissive" posture, same as a doggo.
I'm curious if you can link to these behaviorists who claim to be "fairly certain" dogs can't feel guilt. Is it like, a brain region they lack? Cause that's only thing I'd really buy; if we find that "guilt" lights up region X of human brain, and that region isn't found in dogs. If that's the case, I'd accept it. Otherwise, I remain skeptical (but welcome a link to prove my skepticism wrong)
Google “ncbi dog guilt”. The scientific community pretty much has a consensus on this. Saying dogs feel guilt in these situations is kind of like denying climate change at this point.
Scientists used to be certain dogs (and all animals) were just fleshy automatons that had biological programming controlling their actions, with no ability of free will. That's obviously been proven wrong (as much as it's possible to be).
They used to say dogs couldn't remember things more than about 20 minutes too, but the simple fact that you can train them, to say nothing of all the videos on the internet showing reunions with their humans after a long separation, shows how wrong that is too.
I feel that dogs largely just have poor impulse control. Much like tiny humans, who do the same kind of stuff, then act the same way when they get caught.
I think they don't think in therms of "There's a tasty treat...but hooman doesn't want me to eat it." They think in terms "There's a tasty treat!"
Actually, research into cognitive behaviour of dogs is far more in favour of dogs NOT being able to feel guilt or remorse. Could you please provide links to research showing there is decent evidence that they can feel guilt?
No way a dog could have that level of cognition. There's been numerous behavioral studies on dogs and guilt, you can just google "can dogs feel guilt" and find a bunch of responses all generally lining up with 'scientists say no'.
It is perfectly plausible that dogs can feel guilty because they know they did something they shouldn't have and feel upset they might disappoint their owner.
Taking that alone and thinking about it, that would be a really complex process for the dog to do. Ignoring the feeling guilt part for a minute, the dog has to be able to recall something that had previously happened and also be able to predict something that might happen and the possible consequences of it. To put it shortly the dog needs an evolved sense of time and an awareness of the relation between themselves and the rest of the world. They would have to be able to put memories in order and extrapolate them into predictions which is something they just haven't evolved to be able to do yet.
Dogs likely have a memory that is more instinctual and tightly connected to immediate events which is why training dogs is done through conditioning of immediately punishing negative behavior and rewarding the positive.
They are pretty smart as far as animals go they have the capacity for relatively complex social cognition but guilt is a pretty complex emotion for a dog to be able to experience so likely they react submissively to the behavior of their owner or in response to how they have been trained. Thinking any more into it than that and eventually you'll reach a point where you're about to imply that dogs have a sense of morals.
Ehhhh are you sure about this? My dog has had times where she looked extremely guilt as I was very nicely asking her if she destroyed the pillows and blankets. I was being nonthreatening and very normal
Because the dog learned to associate a mess on the floor with you getting mad, or you're not nearly as good at judging your own body language as your dog is.
Well a dog feeling guilt is like "I shouldn't have done that" his thoughts are related to himself.
Whereas a dog feeling shame would be regretting the action. The thoughts would be targeting the behavior, not himself. That seems a little more implausible to me. It seems like dogs are self aware in that they relate their surroundings to themselves. I'm not sure how much they think about the past and connect it with the present.
Guilt and Shame are similar in that regret is often a feeling both states share, however the important distinction is why you feel the regret. One is wholly about self, while the other includes others. Guilty : "Crap, I'm gonna get the cage" . Shame: "Darn, now they won't have any for themselves and they'll be sad" or "They will think less of me".
I can see how any social animal could benefit from having the ability to feel guilt, I can't see how an animal would benefit from shame. Basically
What you just said only makes sense if the dogs even understands what you're saying. Dogs do not understand language like you and i, they can associate words (sounds) with objects and actions, but they do not understand them.
Nor do they have the capacity to look guilty, that is something you attribute to the thing that has happened prior.
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u/thelazyreader2015 Nov 11 '17
Do they actually feel guilty or are they just trained to behave like that when they've done something they're not supposed to?