Institute of Psychology, University of Hildesheim, Hildesheim, Niedersachsen, Germany.
Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, Hampshire, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2018 Mar 23;13(3):e0194808. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0194808. eCollection 2018.
In recent years, an increasing number of studies has investigated majority influence in nonhuman animals. However, due to both terminological and methodological issues, evidence for conformity in nonhuman animals is scarce and controversial. Preliminary evidence suggests that wild birds, wild monkeys, and fish show conformity, that is, forgoing personal information in order to copy the majority. By contrast, chimpanzees seem to lack this tendency. The present study is the first to examine whether dogs (Canis familiaris) show conformity. Specifically, we tested whether dogs conform to a majority of conspecifics rather than stick to what they have previously learned. After dogs had acquired a behavioral preference via training (i.e., shaping), they were confronted with counter-preferential behavior of either no, one or three conspecifics. Traditional frequentist analyses show that the dogs' behavior did not differ significantly between the three conditions. Complementary Bayesian analyses suggest that our data provide moderate evidence for the null hypothesis. In conclusion, our results suggest that dogs stick to what they have learned rather than conform to the counter-preferential behavior of others. We discuss the possible statistical and methodological limitations of this finding. Furthermore, we take a functional perspective on conformity and discuss under which circumstances dogs might show conformity after all.
近年来，越来越多的研究调查了非人类动物中的多数影响。然而，由于术语和方法学问题，非人类动物中一致性的证据仍然很少且存在争议。初步证据表明，野生鸟类、野生猴子和鱼类表现出一致性，即放弃个人信息以便模仿多数。相比之下，黑猩猩似乎缺乏这种倾向。本研究首次检验了狗（Canis familiaris）是否表现出一致性。具体来说，我们测试了狗是否会服从多数同类的行为，而不是坚持自己之前所学的行为。在狗通过训练（即塑造）获得了一种行为偏好后，我们让它们面对没有、一个或三个同类的相反偏好行为。传统的频率主义分析表明，狗在这三种情况下的行为没有显著差异。补充的贝叶斯分析表明，我们的数据为零假设提供了中等程度的证据。总之，我们的结果表明，狗坚持自己所学的行为，而不是服从他人的相反偏好行为。我们讨论了这一发现可能存在的统计和方法学限制。此外，我们从功能的角度探讨了在什么情况下狗可能会表现出一致性。
