If you’re a dog owner, you know very well how your dog looks after they have done something ugly. Their body language seems to radiate guilt. From tucked tail to visible whites of the eyes, from hunched posture to yawning or licking, from flattened ears to avoiding eye contact, these are the telling signs that your beloved fur ball is up to something it wasn’t allowed to.
However, many veterinary experts suggest that this is a classic case of anthropomorphism, which happens when we attribute human characteristics or behavior to an animal. In fact, dogs' guilt may be nothing but an illusion.
This study researched “guilty” canine expressions by observing dogs and their owners under several sets of circumstances. The scientists discovered that dogs tended to display “guilty” body language more frequently when their owners scolded them than when the owners remained neutral. And this was true in both cases, when the dog had actually done something and when it did nothing wrong at all.
Commenting on this study, dog cognition scientist Dr. Alexandra Horowitz concluded that “a better description of the so-called guilty look is that it is a response to owner cues, rather than that it shows an appreciation of a misdeed.”
According to Dr. Mary R. Burch, a certified applied animal behaviorist, when a dog looks guilty for an action such as house soiling or chewing, it has most likely done this before and may have experienced a strong reaction from his owner. This can include scolding, yelling, or the cold shoulder. Dr. Burch argues that the dog may anticipate how the owner will react and exhibit body language to try to appease his owner. Dogs’ body language is more likely a way to ask for forgiveness rather than expressing feelings of guilt.
In fact, dog owners are more intertwined with their beloved pets than they’d like to think. There’s a substantial body of research done on people and pets, showing that animals provide unique insights into their owners’ personalities. That includes rather surprising things – like having a sense of humor.
So to find out more about dog owners, as well as other animal lovers and what personalities they have depending on the pet they own, we reached out to Richard Wiseman, a professor at the University of Hertfordshire who carried out a study of 2000 pet owners. Prof. Wiseman asked them to rate their personality on things like sociability, emotional stability, and sense of humor, and rate their pets as well.
Incredibly, “the results revealed significant similarities between the personality of owners and their pets,” prof. Wiseman commented. He said that past studies have revealed that owners often show a physical resemblance to their pets, but this research showed something pretty new: “it suggests that they may also think alike.”
What’s more, the similarity between owners and their pets increased over time, which suggests that pets may slowly come to adopt their owner’s personality, while the owners adapt to their pets. Prof. Wiseman explained that it’s common for owners to insist that their pets have a unique personality and “not only does it suggest they might be right, but also demonstrates that people’s pets are a reflection of themselves."
