Are dogs guilty or reacting to their human’s emotional state?

We’ve all seen the videos floating around YouTube featuring dogs giving “guilty looks.” The forlorn expression, head hung low, avoiding eye contact and other forms of body language that dog owners insist are proof of misbehavior, disobedience, and the dog’s admission of guilt. By not properly understanding your dog’s guilty look, you could be scolding or reprimanding your dog unfairly.

Are these dogs comprehending guilt or are we misinterpreting their behavior and body language, and what’s prompting the “guilty look?”

Author of Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know and canine cognition researcher Dr. Alexandra Horowitz wanted to uncover what prompts the “guilty look.” Her study, published in Behavioral Processes, involved a series of trials where owners would place a valuable treat on the floor and tell their dog to leave it alone and then exit the room.

Researchers would purposely misinform the owner about what their dog did once they returned to the room. In certain trials, the researchers would give the dog the treat or the dog would obediently leave the treat alone, but owners were told that the dog had eaten it.

The results showed that the “guilty look” had nothing to do with the dog’s obedience or disobedience, but had everything to do with how the owner reacted when they came back into the room. The dog was simply trying to appease the owner’s upset. And more “guilty looks” occurred in obedient dogs (dogs that didn’t eat the treat) when they were verbally scolded by their misinformed owners.

This study highlights the how easily dog body language and emotions can be misinterpreted, and the importance of understanding the dog’s perspective. Good Dog in a Box is developing helpful tools for understanding your dog’s body language. Stay tuned!