We all know that dogs are smart. But apparently, they know when they’re being lied to regarding food. A new study has found that canines are more likely to ignore people who are lying. Thus, it seems like they are able to recognise if a person is being deceptive.
It has been widely thought that dogs had a similar behaviour to children under the age of 5. However, there are now speculations that dogs are able to recognise when a person is trying to deceive them. Professor Ludwig Huber from the University of Vienna believes that dogs are able to think when a person is intentionally giving them false information, or lying.
Huber’s Study
The study conducted by Professor Huber and his fellow colleagues in Austria consisted of 260 dogs of different breeds. The dogs were trained to find a treat hidden in one of two bowls. Each dog was provided a suggestion from the ‘communicator’, a stranger that the dog has never met. The communicator would touch one of the bowls to ‘suggest’ that bowl was filled with treats. Simultaneously, the communicator would verbally communicate phrases such as ‘the food is in here’. The researchers found that dogs trusted the communicator more when their signal was reliable.
This training was repeated several times in order to establish trust for the main part of the study. For this experiment, the researchers moved the food from the first bowl to the second, with the dog watching them. The communicator was either present during the switch, or they were briefly removed from the room and thus unaware that a switch had occurred. In both instances, the communicators would still recommend the now empty first bowl.
Results of the Study
To the surprise of the researchers, the dogs weren’t very trusting of the communicators who lied. In the experiment where the communicator wasn’t present during the switch, only about half of the dogs followed the misleading advice of the communicator. However, in the experiment where the communicator witnessed the switch, only a third of the dogs followed the misleading advice. The rest of the dogs in the experiment simply went to the food-filled bowl and completely ignored the communicator.
This study reinforces the notion that dogs closely monitor our behaviour to learn from us. Furthermore, in the study where the communicator was not present during the switch, half of the dogs still followed the misleading advice. This could explain the processes behind how social information is processed in dogs. There is evidence, both from a genetic and a behavioural standpoint, that dogs are hyper social animals. This means that a lot of dogs may have trouble ignoring social cues even if another option results in a better outcome.
Comparing the Results to a Similar Study
The findings of this study differs from the findings of a similar study conducted with children and primates. In a previous study involving primates and children under the age of 5, the participants had a different reaction compared to dogs. In the study, if the communicator wasn’t present during the switch, the primates and children ignored the communicator’s misleading advice. However, if the communicator was present during the food switch, but still recommended the empty bowl anyways, the participants were more likely to follow the communicator’s misleading advice and approach the empty bowl.
Huber suggests that this is because children and primates put a greater emphasis on trust. Thus, they trusted the communicator more than they trusted their own eyes.
