Dog owners beware - Your best friend is judging you

If you think your dog is just a warm fuzzy companion who never judges you‚ think again.

New research - published recently in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews - has found that your dog is able to judge you according to whether you treat other people well or not.

Up to now‚ studies have shown that human beings by the age of one have an “innate morality” that develops long before they are taught how to behave.

But now‚ comparative psychologist James Anderson‚ a researcher at Kyoto University in Japan‚ and his team have delved into the world of dogs and monkeys to see if they too were watching with a keen eye to see who helps others and who doesn’t.

They wanted to discover whether “species (other than human beings) make social evaluations in a similar way”.

Testing both dogs and capuchin monkeys‚ by seeing if they responded differently to one person who helps others compared with one who doesn’t‚ Anderson said the results show that “monkeys and dogs make social evaluations in a somewhat similar way to human infants”.

He said: “If somebody is behaving antisocially‚ they probably end up with some sort of emotional reaction to it.”

Researchers would have dogs and monkeys witness two people behaving differently. Person A‚ for example‚ would take some balls from someone and not give it back whereas Person B would give it back.

Or the dog owner would pretend to struggle to open a can. Then‚ two actors would appear. One would help the owner‚ the other would react passively. When they looked at the data‚ the dogs and monkeys kept choosing the individuals who showed an act of kindness over those who were passive.

For the monkeys‚ it is almost like being part of reality TV show Survivor.

“Monkeys in the wild are likely to use similar processes to decide which members of their group they can cooperate with‚” said primatologist Frans de Waal of Emory University‚ Georgia.

“Chances are that if these animals can detect cooperative tendencies in human actors‚ they also can in their fellow primates‚” he said.

The researchers also believe that “our own sense of morality may even have its roots in these sorts of primitive evaluations of others”.

De Waal sees a strong link between morality and reputation.

“Human morality is very much based on reputation building‚ because why would you try to be good if no one cares?” he said.

“I don’t think you can conclude that it makes the monkeys moral beings‚ but ‘image scoring’‚ as reputation building is sometimes called‚ provides an important key mechanism.”

- TMG Digital/The Times