I find evolutionary-psychological reasoning always a bit suspect because it seems
a bit too good to explain just about anything. Having said that—sometimes dogs seem to have a sense of guilt—does that imply they have a kind of morality too(*)? Or is it just some kind of ‘act’ due to co-evolution with humans?
(*) De Waal in Primates and
Philosophers
argues that some animals have a certain degree of morality (Robert Wright
slightly disagrees with De Waal, in the same book).
I sort of agree with this; it’s temptingly easy to explain away complex higher-level behaviors as adaptations.
But unless I am missing something, the alternative to an evolutionary theory of guilt isn’t a non-evolutionary theory of guilt. It’s to say “Guilt? Well, obviously if you do something immoral, then you feel bad afterwards, because on some level you know it was wrong.” As far as I know once you’ve reached the point where you really feel like emotions require explanations and you understand that the explanations cannot themselves be mental, evolutionary psychology is pretty much the only game in town.
I’m not saying the particular formulation of guilt presented here is right—maybe it’s Tooby and Cosmides’ model, maybe it’s something else no one’s ever thought of, but I think any accurate model of guilt would sound just as reductionist as this one.
I don’t doubt that owners have an inaccurate view of their pets’ mental life, but I wouldn’t draw the line between human guilt and dog seeming-guilt too sharply. Specifically, the article says:
Where there was any change in the dogs’ expression, it was seen to be a subsequent reflection of the human’s emotions.
(correction—here’s a better quote:
If an owner thought the dog had misbehaved and then told the dog off, some dogs showed an “admonished” look, which humans then misunderstood as an admission of guilt.)
So, dogs show a guilty face, not in response to their own past actions, but in response to human reactions. But this is not entirely unlike how guilt works in humans. As you yourself observed:
guilt sometimes occurs even when a person has done nothing wrong.
Humans are perceptibly better than dogs at remembering what they did and planning what they’re going to do, and this aspect of guilt—awareness of what the dog had done—seems to be missing. But other aspects of guilt seem to be present.
If an owner thought the dog had misbehaved and then told the dog off, some dogs showed an “admonished” look, which humans then misunderstood as an admission of guilt.)
So, dogs show a guilty face, not in response to their own past actions, but in response to human reactions.
That isn’t what happens with dogs, at all! Whoever claimed this has never had a dog.
I’ve had a dog, and usually, the first clue you get that your dog has done something wrong is that your dog comes up to you, face downcast, ears and tail drooping, then gives you that big-eyed “I’m so sorry” pleading look. Before you have any clue that the dog has misbehaved.
There was no “misinterpreting” my dog’s guilty look, because it was binary. We often punished him by telling him to go stand in the closet for a short time. So if we came home, and he had done something he knew we’d be upset about, he’d greet us at the door, and then go open the closet door and walk into it. Hard to misinterpret.
On second look, the experiment does not look very compelling, specifically because the misdeed that being used may be too weak to trigger guilt even if the dog can feel guilt. The misdeed is this:
the dog had stolen and eaten a forbidden treat.
This trivial misdeed ranks pretty low on the list of things that I would find troubling. Higher up would be making a mess, higher still would be destroying something. I can understand why the experimenters might want to choose a trivial misdeed—they want to keep costs down.
As it happens I’ve read an alternative explanation of guilty behavior in dogs, which is that the dog is reacting not to a memory of having committed a misdeed, but to the presence of some situation (i.e. the aftermath of the misdeed) that the dog knows makes you upset, and that the dog would be acting equally guilty regardless of whether this aftermath was the product of the dog’s own behavior or not. Now I’ll be the first to say that this sounds almost like whoever came up with that theory is trying very hard to come up with any excuse to deny dogs a little bit of memory and self-awareness. But still, I thought I’d mention the theory.
As it happens I’ve read an alternative explanation of guilty behavior in dogs, which is that the dog is reacting not to a memory of having committed a misdeed, but to the presence of some situation (i.e. the aftermath of the misdeed) that the dog knows makes you upset, and that the dog would be acting equally guilty regardless of whether this aftermath was the product of the dog’s own behavior or not.
As Yvain pointed out in the main post, the same thing also applies to humans.
Yes, agreed—for common behaviours, it’s hard to think of
anything but evo-psy. Hypothetically, there could some global
environmental factor that influences behaviour—think gay
bomb—but that’s
probably not very realistic.
The trouble with evo-psy is indeed how it’s hard to distinguish
between alternative hypotheses.
Regarding the BBC-article—I think it is more about the dog
owners than the animals themselves. But of course, if the only
‘evidence’ for dog-guilt is the bias of their owners, the case
gets very weak.
Dogs are only recently extracted from wolves, which are social animals whose behavior affects their status in the group. They would have experienced similar pressures even before their co-evolution with humans.
Observing guilt in non-social animals would probably falsify the hypothesis though.
My unofficial conclusion after a few years of paying attention to my dog in this space is that mostly what she’s doing is giving me the signals that work.
The “I’m sorry, please forgive me, see: I’m lovable!” face/dance is really quite effective at defusing my irritation, especially given that she can often pick up on me being irritated before I quite notice it myself.
does that imply they have a kind of morality too? Or is it just some kind of ‘act’ due to co-evolution with humans?
I’m not sure there’s that strong a difference between these scenarios. What’s the difference between an act that is usually followed and a morality that is occasionally breached? Couple this with self-deception and the description of a mind as multiple interacting agents...
I usually interpret the intended difference to have to do with the relevance of belief in observers.
That is, when my X is described as “merely an act,” I understand the speaker to be suggesting that if I believed myself unobserved, I would not demonstrate X. (There’s also a related implication having to do with sincerity, but that’s much trickier to express in a succinct coherent way.)
Of course, as you point out, in reality it’s more complicated than that, and something can be in some meaningful sense “an act” while also being something I do for my own benefit.
I find evolutionary-psychological reasoning always a bit suspect because it seems a bit too good to explain just about anything. Having said that—sometimes dogs seem to have a sense of guilt—does that imply they have a kind of morality too(*)? Or is it just some kind of ‘act’ due to co-evolution with humans?
(*) De Waal in Primates and Philosophers argues that some animals have a certain degree of morality (Robert Wright slightly disagrees with De Waal, in the same book).
I sort of agree with this; it’s temptingly easy to explain away complex higher-level behaviors as adaptations.
But unless I am missing something, the alternative to an evolutionary theory of guilt isn’t a non-evolutionary theory of guilt. It’s to say “Guilt? Well, obviously if you do something immoral, then you feel bad afterwards, because on some level you know it was wrong.” As far as I know once you’ve reached the point where you really feel like emotions require explanations and you understand that the explanations cannot themselves be mental, evolutionary psychology is pretty much the only game in town.
I’m not saying the particular formulation of guilt presented here is right—maybe it’s Tooby and Cosmides’ model, maybe it’s something else no one’s ever thought of, but I think any accurate model of guilt would sound just as reductionist as this one.
Guilt in dogs seems to be mostly illusory.
I don’t doubt that owners have an inaccurate view of their pets’ mental life, but I wouldn’t draw the line between human guilt and dog seeming-guilt too sharply. Specifically, the article says:
(correction—here’s a better quote:
So, dogs show a guilty face, not in response to their own past actions, but in response to human reactions. But this is not entirely unlike how guilt works in humans. As you yourself observed:
Humans are perceptibly better than dogs at remembering what they did and planning what they’re going to do, and this aspect of guilt—awareness of what the dog had done—seems to be missing. But other aspects of guilt seem to be present.
That isn’t what happens with dogs, at all! Whoever claimed this has never had a dog.
I’ve had a dog, and usually, the first clue you get that your dog has done something wrong is that your dog comes up to you, face downcast, ears and tail drooping, then gives you that big-eyed “I’m so sorry” pleading look. Before you have any clue that the dog has misbehaved.
There was no “misinterpreting” my dog’s guilty look, because it was binary. We often punished him by telling him to go stand in the closet for a short time. So if we came home, and he had done something he knew we’d be upset about, he’d greet us at the door, and then go open the closet door and walk into it. Hard to misinterpret.
On second look, the experiment does not look very compelling, specifically because the misdeed that being used may be too weak to trigger guilt even if the dog can feel guilt. The misdeed is this:
This trivial misdeed ranks pretty low on the list of things that I would find troubling. Higher up would be making a mess, higher still would be destroying something. I can understand why the experimenters might want to choose a trivial misdeed—they want to keep costs down.
As it happens I’ve read an alternative explanation of guilty behavior in dogs, which is that the dog is reacting not to a memory of having committed a misdeed, but to the presence of some situation (i.e. the aftermath of the misdeed) that the dog knows makes you upset, and that the dog would be acting equally guilty regardless of whether this aftermath was the product of the dog’s own behavior or not. Now I’ll be the first to say that this sounds almost like whoever came up with that theory is trying very hard to come up with any excuse to deny dogs a little bit of memory and self-awareness. But still, I thought I’d mention the theory.
As Yvain pointed out in the main post, the same thing also applies to humans.
Yes, agreed—for common behaviours, it’s hard to think of anything but evo-psy. Hypothetically, there could some global environmental factor that influences behaviour—think gay bomb—but that’s probably not very realistic.
The trouble with evo-psy is indeed how it’s hard to distinguish between alternative hypotheses.
Regarding the BBC-article—I think it is more about the dog owners than the animals themselves. But of course, if the only ‘evidence’ for dog-guilt is the bias of their owners, the case gets very weak.
Dogs are only recently extracted from wolves, which are social animals whose behavior affects their status in the group. They would have experienced similar pressures even before their co-evolution with humans.
Observing guilt in non-social animals would probably falsify the hypothesis though.
My unofficial conclusion after a few years of paying attention to my dog in this space is that mostly what she’s doing is giving me the signals that work.
The “I’m sorry, please forgive me, see: I’m lovable!” face/dance is really quite effective at defusing my irritation, especially given that she can often pick up on me being irritated before I quite notice it myself.
Also see Wild Justice, a book that surveys animal moral systems. I interviewed one of the authors here.
I’m not sure there’s that strong a difference between these scenarios. What’s the difference between an act that is usually followed and a morality that is occasionally breached? Couple this with self-deception and the description of a mind as multiple interacting agents...
I usually interpret the intended difference to have to do with the relevance of belief in observers.
That is, when my X is described as “merely an act,” I understand the speaker to be suggesting that if I believed myself unobserved, I would not demonstrate X. (There’s also a related implication having to do with sincerity, but that’s much trickier to express in a succinct coherent way.)
Of course, as you point out, in reality it’s more complicated than that, and something can be in some meaningful sense “an act” while also being something I do for my own benefit.