Is it true that dogs do things out of spite and feel guilty when they do something wrong?
It is unlikely that dogs are spiteful, feel guilt, or know right from wrong. I’ve heard people say, “Even though he knew it was wrong, my dog got into the trash to get back at me for leaving him home. He knew it was wrong because he looked guilty when I came home.” For this to be true, your dog would have to think about what you have done to him in the past, (left him home), and the ramifications of what he will do now, (get into trash.)
To feel guilt, your dog must understand the abstract moral concepts of right and wrong, categorize behaviors as right or wrong, and connect what he did hours ago with your reaction to trash on the floor. All of this complex, abstract, past and future thinking occurs in a part of the brain called the Frontal Lobes. The Frontal Lobes comprise 29% of a human brain versus 7% of a dog’s brain. From studying the effects of brain damage, scientists know how the size of the Frontal Lobe affects abstract thinking and planning. Given the small size of their Frontal Lobes, dogs have minimal capacity for complex, abstract thinking or planning.
If your dog gets into the trash, it is most likely because he was bored and the trash was tempting and accessible. Dogs live very much in the moment and their behavior is guided by learning connections between events that happen within moments of each other. If you catch him in the act of getting into the trash and punish him, he will connect being punished with getting into the trash. If you find the spilled trash hours later and then punish him, he will learn that people seeing trash on the floor means punishment. He will not learn that getting into the trash caused punishment. The “guilty look” simply means that he has learned to be afraid of you when you see trash on the floor.
If you want to test the idea of your dog feeling guilty for getting into the trash, try this. Take your dog out of the kitchen and spill some trash on the floor. Then let your dog back into the kitchen. Act like you think he spilled the trash. Your dog will do a classic “guilty” look even though he had nothing to do with spilling the trash. Understanding the limitations of your dog’s thinking and learning will help you do a better job of training your dog and help you have more reasonable expectations.
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Janice who had Max says
Well, I have to tell you. When I first got Max I lived with my mother. After I got my own place in the city, I would still take him to visit my mother when I did my laundry. I went on a vacation for 2 weeks, and I left my dog with my mother who truly liked him and took very good care of him. When I got home from my 2-week vacation, she greeted me with the fact that Max had relieved himself ON MY BED, and not just a token. She said it was a giant load! So do you think he was angry at me? Or do you think he just couldn’t think of anywhere else to go? This was a very, very housebroken dog. He could wait 8 hours or more to go for a walk when I worked in the city. He never messed in my apartment. go figure.
Jack Offett says
Anyone who believes dogs never act out of spite has probably not lived with enough dogs to know. And if one has several dogs and something goes wrong, it is odd that it is usually one, and not the others, who seems to exhibit guilt…
Shawn Mathiesen says
Janice,
I suspect your room, with you on a two week vacation and you no longer living at home, was one of the least used rooms in your Mother’s home. Being separated from you most likely caused your dog to feel stress. Stress has been known to cause digestive upset, and/or your mother may have been treating Max with somewhat richer food than he was used to, causing a bit of diarrhea for Max. Given the abnormally large quantity of his “token”, as described by your mother, it does sound like he may have had some digestive upset. Dogs do not like to defecate in their own living space. If Max had an urgent need to defecate and was unable to access his normal bathroom spot, he would naturally choose the least used space in the home and a spot that was out of his own normal line of sight, like on the bed in your room. I think you can believe that being left without you was truly upsetting to your dog, but that his choice of where to defecate was motivated by urgency and hygiene preferences, rather than spite.
Ken Noble says
So one day, one Labrador ago, I head down to MIss Anna’s to pick up my Washington PRAVDA in a tandem mission…the second part of which was to deliver a CHOCOLATE cake to the HHGarnett Elementary School Washington’s Birthday PTA extravaganza. Anyway, I LIKE saunter back to the car with me Pravda and my DAWG immediately, I mean without hesitation, puts on the most guilt stricken sschirk (like..yeah I feel real bad, but it was WORTH IT!) and….d’ain’t no cake in the back of the de care no mo’…you get what I mean?
Janice who had Max says
@ Ken, ah, no, don’t get it.
Jim says
Scene 1
Jarvis, a lhasa apso/poodle mix, was extremely offended whenever he broke wind. He would turn his head to look at his hind quarters then to us as if to say “hey it wasn’t me… It was my butt and I had nothing to do with it”. He would then slink off to another part of the house. We eventually found ourselves reinforcing his guilt but he was the one that started the behavior.
Scene 2
One night we noticed Jarvis coming to the top of the stairs in the kitchen in our split level looking down at us sitting on the sofa watching TV in the family room. He would look down at us and then disappear into the living room. After two iterations of this we went to see what he was doing. Turns out he was raiding a candy dish filled with Hershy Kisses on a sofa table. It was clear to us that he knew he was being bad and was checking to see if we had caught on to what he was up to.
Guilt…. Yep dogs feel and express guilt alright.
Joe Diamond says
Ken,
Got news on the Lab.
He arrived in doggie heaven and started barking. The head angle said:
“Hey, whats with the noise?”
“Where am I?” What is going on?”
“You are dead. You ate chocolate……..poison to dogs…you are in doggie heaven……you can have anything you want that will make you happy…and quiet….this is doggie heaven…..what would you like?
“CHOCOLATE”