It’s not just about status. It also communicates “This was an accident, not on purpose” and/or “If given the opportunity, I won’t do that again” which are useful information.
It’s not clear to me where the line between status signalling and communicating useful information even is.
My dog, when she does something that hurts me, frequently engages in behaviors that seem designed to mollify me. Now, that might be because she’s afraid I’ll punish her for the pain and decides to mollify me to reduce the chances of that. It might be because she’s afraid I’ll punish her for the status challenge and decides to anti-challenge me. It might be both. It might be that she has made no decisions at all, and that mollifying behavior is just an automatic response to having caused pain, or given challenge. It might be that the behavior isn’t actually mollifying behavior at all, whether intentional or automatic, and it’s a complete coincidence that I respond to it that way. Or it might not be a coincidence, but rather the result of my having been conditioned to respond to it that way. It might be something else altogether, or some combination.
All of that said, I have no problem categorizing her behavior as “apologizing.”
I often find myself apologizing for things in ways that feel automatic, and I sometimes apologize for things in ways that feel deliberate. I have quite a bit more insight into what’s going on in my head than my dog’s head when this happens, but much of it is cognitively impermeable, and a lot of the theories above seem to apply pretty well to me too.
It’s not just about status. It also communicates “This was an accident, not on purpose” and/or “If given the opportunity, I won’t do that again” which are useful information.
It’s not clear to me where the line between status signalling and communicating useful information even is.
My dog, when she does something that hurts me, frequently engages in behaviors that seem designed to mollify me. Now, that might be because she’s afraid I’ll punish her for the pain and decides to mollify me to reduce the chances of that. It might be because she’s afraid I’ll punish her for the status challenge and decides to anti-challenge me. It might be both. It might be that she has made no decisions at all, and that mollifying behavior is just an automatic response to having caused pain, or given challenge. It might be that the behavior isn’t actually mollifying behavior at all, whether intentional or automatic, and it’s a complete coincidence that I respond to it that way. Or it might not be a coincidence, but rather the result of my having been conditioned to respond to it that way. It might be something else altogether, or some combination.
All of that said, I have no problem categorizing her behavior as “apologizing.”
I often find myself apologizing for things in ways that feel automatic, and I sometimes apologize for things in ways that feel deliberate. I have quite a bit more insight into what’s going on in my head than my dog’s head when this happens, but much of it is cognitively impermeable, and a lot of the theories above seem to apply pretty well to me too.