dogs don't feel guilt?????

melanye · Post by **melanye** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 3:36 pm

Well, call it what you will, but I KNOW my dog knows when she has done something bad or wrong, even before I react. I just recently experienced this while folding clothes on the bed. I noticed she wasn't there and looked into the living room and there she was peeking out from in between the two recliners. I did not say anything or do anything and the next thing, she is hiding by my husband legs who is in the kitchen at the computer. I called her and she came but she would not get on the bed. She acted like she had done something but we coiuldn't find anyhting out of place or wrong so we had not reacted and she was exhibiting "guilt".

Noobs · Post by **Noobs** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 3:51 pm

You don't have to say "Bad dog" and yell and carry on for your dog to be able to tell when your mood has gotten tense. From your posture and any change in the way you even say her name when you call her. So if you couldn't find anything wrong and your dog was "acting guilty" anyway, what was it that she did? How can she act guilty when she didn't do anything? Sounds like calming signals to me.

Maxy24 · Post by **Maxy24** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 3:57 pm

Her behavior in that case could have been because something spooked her. Dogs do not feel guilt, they do not see things like going to the bathroom as "bad" for starters and you cannot teach a dog morals such as good and bad or wrong and right. They can learn that doing one behavior makes them fell good, another makes them feel bad and they can figure out what behaviors make them feel good the quickest and that is the behavior they will choose to do over all others. A dog who looks or acts "guilty" is usually giving appeasement behaviors, which are behaviors that the dog uses to calm you down and to look as harmless as possible in hopes that you will not punish them or make things unpleasant for them (for some dogs simply your angry body language and facial expressions and shunning of the dog can be enough to cause this change in their attitude). Dogs can learn that when there is poop on the floor and you walk in the room things go badly for them. They do not however associate that poop on the floor with the ACTION of pooping so punishment will not be punishing the action it will be punishing her for being near poop, in that room when the owner walks in. So that "guilty" behavior is just the dog trying to keep you from getting upset because he sees that there is poop on the floor and knows that when that happens you get mad (but he is unaware that he can do anything about that other than try and look really really small and calming in hopes that he will calm you and keep you from getting angry, possibly towards him).

Dibbythedog · Post by **Dibbythedog** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 4:10 pm

What sort of things does your dog do that you consider "wrong or bad"?
Do you tell her off when she does them?

Your dog may have made an association between your action of folding your clothes on the bed and a past experience of being chastised in the bedroom or maybe your bodylanguage was tense or as has already been said , maybe somet hing spooked her.
Dogs give submissive body language signals in any circumstamces where they feel threatened or at risk of punishment which we mistake for guilt.

D ogs are often punished for chewing the furniture or weeing on the carpet. To a dog , a leg of a chair is no different from a stick from tree, a carpet is a surface no different from the lawn. Dogs do things we don't want them to do, which we consider wrong or bad but there values are different from ours.
Ali

Pooh Bear · Post by **Pooh Bear** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 5:44 pm

Your description of her behaviour sounds a lot more like fear than 'guilt'. Knowing someone is likely to be mad with you is not the same as feeling guilty because of something you have done. If she had done anything at all, and as Maxy24 said, hadn't just been spooked by something.

I think Maxy24's comments about appeasement behaviours are spot on as well. It's certainly something humans do a lot. Behaviour that appears to be irrational or pointless can still be predictable, and if it is predicted than an attempt can be made to prevent it escalating into a situation with negative consequences.

A lot of our behaviour will appear to be irrational to dogs, it makes no sense at all in their world. They may know that certain situations annoy or upset us, but not why it does, and without that, the concept of guilt makes no sense.

So as has been said a dog can know that if their owner sees poop on the floor things might get unpleasant for them, but they won't understand why, and they certainly won't be feeling guilty about having produced it, why would they?

emmabeth · Post by **emmabeth** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 5:55 pm

You arent the first dog owner to think that because a dog can look guilty, it feels 'guilt' as we understand it.. and you wont be the last either.

One reason dogs are so attractive and appealing to us and why we have had an association with them for thousands of years, is just this sort of behaviour, ie behaviour that we can anthropomorphise, ie ascribe human feelings and emotions to.

This is why we dont have a historical attachment to pet bricks, but do to animals with big, baby like eyes and behaviour that appears to fit in with our own.

However you can think that your dog feels guilty as much as you like, it wont change the fact that she doesnt.

One of the reasons we trainers and behaviourists make a point of clarifying that dogs DONT feel guilt, as much as they may look like they do, is because it causes endless problems for the dog, and the owner.

Dogs pick up on body language far better than people do, so the minute you started acting weird, she will have picked up on that (and you looking around for your dog and beginning to suspect something... is weird, so thats a trigger for her behaviour)... and so she behaves in a way that is designed to stop you doing her any real harm - as said before appeasement gestures that mean 'im no threat, dont kill me'...

Not her fault that they look to us, and of course have been portrayed in films and photos and posters and myriad other media as 'guilty dog' to the point where we struggle to disassociate the imagery with the concept of actually feeling guilt!

Huckleberry · Post by **Huckleberry** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 6:35 pm

I wonder if you were folding clothes at one time and had static electrcity and shocked her and she associates you folding the clothes with the shock that she recieved. I dont think dogs feel guilt in the same sense that we do, I do think they are capable of alot more emotion then most people give them, but to the extent we feel, I dont think so.
If I tell Wyatt not to chew on used tissue and I find him chewing on it and he drops it in front of me, I dont see it as guilt as much as "darn she caught me".

Mattie · Post by **Mattie** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 4:53 am

Your dog is showing she is unhappy with something, uncertanty or fear but not guilt. You are putting human feelings onto your dog but dogs have dog feelings not human.

Hiding behind something is usually fear, even when they peak round what they are hiding behind.

When you called her how did she approach you?

Instead of thinking this as guilt, try and think of other things her body language could be.

Guilt is a human emotion, we are programed from when children that when we don't do what we should to feel guilt, when we do something we shouldn't we are programed to feel guilt, dogs don't have this programming. We have to teach them what we want them to do, we have to teach them how to understand our words, we cannot teach them guilt.

Nettle · Post by **Nettle** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 4:57 am

Take a look at the article in the link posted by Cheetah in the 'Peeing right beside us' thread.

Disney Paws · Post by **Disney Paws** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 1:27 pm

I believe they do. In a book I read, called Marley & Me: Life and Love with the world's worst Dog, if the dog had destroyed something, he would be hiding, if he hadn't, he'd be waiting in the window.

I think dogs sense things like that, though they dont speak a human language.

emmabeth · Post by **emmabeth** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 2:09 pm

nope thats actually a really good example of how they dont feel guilt.

Guilt stops us doing things, a dog feeling guilty would stop doing that thing - but they dont!

In a situation like you describe from Marley and Me, (notably where the training methods that were used on Marley were far from kind or reward based in the main)... this is whats really going on, its like a simple computer program.

Learn: Mess visible + owner = fear.

If mess + owner then run /appeasement behaviour
If nomess + owner then run /bouncy behaviour

This is easily tested and verified by creating a similar mess (shredding paper or card and leaving it in a pile, or actually getting one of the dogs poops from outside and putting it on the floor in a room) yourself, going out for a few hours and coming home.

The dog will run the first program, there is mess and there is owner which means do /appeasment behaviour.

This is nothing to do with guilt, this is learning that 1 environmental trigger + 1 event = outcome.

We learn the same way as kids before we learn to explain or lie or hide mistakes or clear up accidents, because as very small children we, like dogs, lack empathy for others. We cannot understand that our actions can upset annoy or hurt other people, we have no concept of another persons thoughts or feelings and until we do learn that - we cannot feel guilty.

Dogs never develop that empathy for others like we do, so they cannot feel guilty!

Noobs · Post by **Noobs** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 3:55 pm

Disney Paws wrote:I believe they do. In a book I read, called Marley & Me: Life and Love with the world's worst Dog, if the dog had destroyed something, he would be hiding, if he hadn't, he'd be waiting in the window. I think dogs sense things like that, though they dont speak a human language.

Marley and Me was written by an average dog owner who is a journalist, not a behaviorist, so I'm sorry you can't really take what he describes in his dog as gospel. Here's the article posted in the other thread for easy access.

http://www.mmilani.com/canine-guilt.html