They obey “Sit!” “Sit down!” “Come!”. Dogs seem to understand us – but how far does the animal mind really go? Researchers have now shed light on the extent to which the four-legged friends can empathize with us. Their test results suggest that dogs understand the difference between intentional and unintentional behavior in humans – they adjust to the respective intention. According to the scientists, this is an extremely complex achievement of their social intelligence.
What do others know, want or feel? Being able to grasp what is going on in the other person is a key element of human social behavior. According to studies, the ability described in the context of the so-called “Theory of Mind” develops in early childhood and then takes on increasingly complex forms. For a long time this was considered an exclusive achievement of our highly developed mind. But now there is also animal evidence for the ability to mentally attribute. In addition to great apes and corvids, aspects of this cognitive talent have also been found in dogs. The scientists working with Juliane Bräuer from the Max Planck Institute for the History of Man in Jena have now explored how far it extends.
“Unable versus unwilling” test
Her focus was on the four-legged friends’ ability to grasp our intentions. Specifically, the researchers investigated the question: Do dogs understand when people act intentionally or unintentionally, and do they thus have this fundamental component of the Theory of Mind? In the study, the scientists used the so-called “Unable versus Unwilling” test in dogs for the first time. It is used in children to record differences in reactions when they are confronted with a person who is either unable or unwilling to do something. Bräuer and her colleagues, however, now used the test procedure on 51 private family dogs.
Everyone was confronted with three scenarios in which the dog and the experimenter were separated from each other by a transparent wall, which the animal could theoretically walk around. The dogs were first made familiar with the fact that they were given individual pieces of food through an opening in the partition. In the “don’t want” approach, the experimenter withdrew the piece of food in one deliberate motion and placed it on the floor in front of him. In the “Can’t – clumsy” variant, the person tried to pass the food through the opening, but then failed due to clumsiness: The reward “accidentally” fell on the floor – out of the dog’s direct reach. In another “Can’t block” version, however, the intended handover was not possible because the opening in the partition had suddenly been closed. Ultimately, the pieces of food ended up in the same place in front of the experimenter in all three cases. The question now was: do the dogs always react the same way?
Intention causes hesitation
“If dogs can actually attribute intentionality to humans, we would expect them to show different responses in the ‘don’t want’ than in the two ‘can’t’ conditions. And this was actually the case, ”reports Bräuer. As the researchers explain, the difference was how long the dogs waited before approaching the lost reward by running around the cordon. They waited longer in the “don’t want” condition than in both “can’t” conditions. The researchers see the reason for this: When the dogs recognize the intentionality, they hesitate to take actions that contradict the will of the human being. However, according to the interpretation, there is no reason to hesitate when it comes to the food that the investigators actually wanted to give them but couldn’t.
According to the scientists, further behavioral differences in the various conditions underpinned this explanatory approach: In the “don’t want” condition, the dogs sat or lay down more often – actions that are interpreted as appeasement gestures when assessing dog behavior. In addition, the test animals often stopped wagging their tails if they were deliberately withheld from food. “The dogs in our study reacted clearly differently,” emphasizes first author Britta Schünemann.
The scientists point out, however, that they have so far not been able to definitively prove their explanatory approach for the behavioral differences that have been determined. What is really going on in dogs’ heads now needs to be clarified even better in further investigations. Nevertheless, they come to the conclusion: “The results of this study are the first significant indications that dogs have the ability to recognize intentionality.”
Source: Max Planck Institute for the History of Human History, specialist article: Scientific Reports, doi: 10.1038 / s41598-021-94374-3