Your Dog Is Not A Good Judge Of Character

Dogs are great judges of character, right? That’s certainly what lots of people think anyway. If dogs gravitate towards someone then that person must be safe and trustworthy, but if the pooch gets protective then perhaps that someone is untrustworthy. But whether or not this is true and how, if at all, dogs socially evaluate people remains unclear.

Social evaluation is an important skill for any group-living animal. It allows them to assess whether other group members are willing to cooperate and pull their weight or whether they are freeloading while others do the work. Research has shown that many cognitively complex and social animals – like chimpanzees – can even form reputations of other animals based on their own interactions or by observing third-party interactions.

This kind of third-party observation is sometimes referred to as eavesdropping and can offer various benefits, even though first-hand experience may be more accurate. For one thing, it can help the animal avoid the potential cost of direct experience – for instance, dealing with a potentially selfish partner or even being faced with aggression. However, eavesdropping is also pretty demanding, as it requires an animal to recognize and remember behaviors it sees as well as the ones performing them.

Chimpanzees are so proficient at this skill that they can even form reputations of humans whom they like or mistrust. Research has also examined the behavior in dogs due to their historically intimate relationship with us, but the findings have been inconsistent.

Previous work with the Wolf Science Center in Austria has shown that pack-living dogs and wolves did not form reputations of individual humans after either direct or indirect experiences. But is this due to them not being able to form judgments, or is it because these particular animals had less experience with people? This is the question the researchers at Kyoto University wanted to address.

In their new study, the team observed 40 pet dog participants to see whether age and development affected how they form reputations of humans. Firstly, the researchers arranged for the dogs to eavesdrop on other dogs interacting with two humans. One of these people was generous and fed the dog they were interacting with, while the other did not feed them.

After witnessing this interaction, the eavesdropper interacted with the humans directly. The researchers took careful note of who the dogs approached first, as well as their behavior, such as jumping up, and their proximity to each person. What did they find?

There was no significant preference towards the generous person who fed the other dog when compared to the selfish one who did not. This was consistent across all dog age groups.

"It's clear that reputation formation may be more complex than previously thought, even for animals like dogs that closely cooperate with humans," first author Hoi-Lam Jim, who recently joined the faculty at Kyoto University, explained in a statement.

According to the researchers, this study demonstrates the methodological difficulties in accurately capturing dogs’ understanding and their evaluation of human behavior. Since direct reputation formation is needed for eavesdropping, the team did not really expect to find evidence of reputation formation. However, they were surprised that there was no significant evidence for it after direct interactions.

"It is possible that methodological challenges in the experimental design, particularly the use of a two-choice test, may explain our negative findings, rather than an absence of capacity," Jim added.

Future research, Jim and colleagues argue, should systematically compare dogs of all ages from different populations and life experiences. This could also include service dogs, free-ranging dogs, and police dogs.

So while dog-lovers may well feel like their furry companion is able to socially evaluate their friends, at present that might just be us projecting our thoughts onto them.

The study is published in the journal Animal Cognition.