According to a novel study conducted by German researchers from the University of Göttingen and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, dogs are smart enough to understand whether a human is doing something unintentionally or on purpose. The researchers compared dog’s spontaneous reactions to intentional and unintentional human behavior.
The experiment, involving 51 dogs - 27 female and 24 male of various breeds, was conducted where they looked at how dogs reacted when food rewards were withheld from them, either intentionally or unintentionally. Separated from the human by a transparent barrier, the dog was offered pieces of doggy treats through a vertical gap in the barrier.
The first group was termed as the unwilling condition where the experimenter withdrew the reward suddenly and placed it in front of themselves. In the second group, the experimenter brought the reward to the gap in the barrier but dropped it ‘accidentally.’ In the third group, the experimenter again tried to reward the dog but was unable to do so since the gap in the barrier was blocked. Researchers predicted that if dogs can recognize the intentions of the humans, they would wait longer before approaching the reward in the unwilling condition where the dogs weren’t supposed to get the reward. What happened was the dogs didn’t just wait longer in the first condition than others, they stopped wagging their tails and were also more likely to lie down or sit - actions that are interpreted as appeasing behaviors.
Study author Britta Schünemann explained, “The dogs in our study behaved differently depending on whether the actions of a human experimenter were intentional or unintentional. Nevertheless, the findings present important initial evidence that dogs may have at least one aspect of Theory of Mind – the capacity to recognize intention-in-action.”
Post a comment