It’s no secret that our dogs are have heightened senses and intuitive abilities. Some of us have dogs that will bark at certain people for no reason. This usually leads us to be suspicious of them.
And science says that we might have good reason to be.
This is because studies say that our dogs can tell if a person is untrustworthy and rude or unhelpful. They do this by learning behavioral cues from someone that is unreliable.
“Dogs are known to consistently follow human pointing gestures. In this study, we asked whether dogs ‘automatically’ do this or whether they flexibly adjust their behavior depending upon the reliability of the pointer, demonstrated in an immediately preceding event, ” the study’s abstract reads.
Basically, the study was trying to figure out if a dog will change its behavior after they learn whether or not they can trust a person.
The study involved hiding a piece of food in one of two containers. In phase one of the first experiment, the experimenter pointed at the container with the food in it while the other pointed at the container that was empty.
In phase 2, the experimenter showed the dog the contents of both containers. The experimenter then pointed at the empty container. Phase 3 was a repeat of phase 1.
“We compared the dogs’ responses to the experimenter’s pointing gestures in Phases 1 and 3. Most dogs followed pointing in Phase 1, but many fewer did so in Phase 3. In Experiment 2, dogs followed a new experimenter’s pointing in Phase 3 following replication of procedures of Phases 1 and 2 in Experiment 1. This ruled out the possibility that dogs simply lost motivation to participate in the task in later phases,” the study said.
At first, the dogs followed the commands of the experimenter and went to the container they pointed to. But they stopped following the command of the experimenter that pointed to the empty container after they learned that this person consistently directed them to a container without a treat.
The dogs learned that this person was untrustworthy.
Conversely, they consistently obeyed commands from the experimenter that pointed to the container with the treat. They learned that this person was trustworthy.
“These results suggest that not only dogs are highly skilled at understanding human pointing gestures, but also they make inferences about the reliability of a human who presents cues and consequently modify their behavior flexibly depending on the inference,” the study says.
The study concluded that dogs can decide whether or not a person is reliable based on their behavior and will modify their behavior accordingly.
Another study says your dog can figure out if someone is rude or indifferent. In this study, the dog’s owner would ask one of two researchers for help with opening a jar.
One researcher would help and the other would flat out refuse to help the owner. Both researchers would then offer the dog a treat.
The dogs in this study were more likely to take a treat from the researcher that helped their owner. The dog would often avoid the treat from the researcher who refused to help their owner.
So, these studies tell us that dogs can tell if someone is not to be trusted and will avoid people who don’t treat their owners kindly. So, next time your dog seems to have a hunch about a person, you might want to follow it.
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