Ostojić Ljerka, Tkalčić Mladenka, Clayton Nicola S
Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EB, UK.
Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Rijeka, Sveučilišna avenija 4, 51000 Rijeka Croatia.
Behav Processes. 2015 Feb;111:97-100. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2014.12.010. Epub 2015 Jan 3.
While dog owners claim that their dogs' greeting behaviour after having performed a misdeed indicates the dogs' 'guilt', current experimental evidence suggests that dogs show these 'guilty look' behaviours as a response to being scolded by their owners. Given reports that 'guilty look' behaviours are shown also in the absence of being scolded, we investigated whether the dogs' own actions or the evidence of a misdeed might serve as triggering cues. We manipulated whether or not dogs ate a 'forbidden' food item and whether or not the food was visible upon the owners' return. Based on their dogs' greeting behaviour, owners stated that their dog had eaten the food no more than expected by chance. In addition, dogs' greeting behaviours were not affected by their own action or the presence or absence of the food. Thus, our findings do not support the hypothesis that dogs show the 'guilty look' in the absence of a concurrent negative reaction by their owners.
虽然狗主人声称他们的狗在做错事后的问候行为表明狗有“内疚感”，但目前的实验证据表明，狗表现出这些“内疚表情”行为是对主人责骂的反应。鉴于有报道称，即使没有被责骂，狗也会表现出“内疚表情”行为，我们调查了狗自身的行为或不当行为的证据是否可能作为触发线索。我们控制了狗是否吃了“禁食”食物，以及主人回来时食物是否可见。根据狗的问候行为，主人表示他们的狗吃了食物的情况并不比偶然预期的多。此外，狗的问候行为不受它们自己的行为或食物是否存在的影响。因此，我们的研究结果不支持这样的假设，即狗在主人没有同时做出负面反应的情况下会表现出“内疚表情”。
