Do you think your dog is a good judge of character? You’re probably right!

Most dog owners have a tale of a person that their dog simply did not take to, who later turned out to be a bad friend or simply someone who you found you do not have a lot in common with, or tend to disagree with regularly. On the other hand, most dog owners have faced the opposite situation too, in which our dogs have made a beeline for someone that we don’t particularly like or try to avoid and seemed really pleased to meet them and get some attention!

It is certainly fair to assume that a lot of our interpretations of how dogs think about individual people and how they behave around them are due to anthropomorphism-or putting two and two together and making five. However, results of research recently published in the professional journal Neuroscience and Biobehavioural Reviews indicates that dogs do in fact tend to be good judges of character-and act accordingly.

Ever done something sneaky with just a dog as your witness, or walked back into a room where your dog is sitting with someone and thought that your dog seems to be viewing the other party with suspicion? The science says there is something to it!

In this article, we will examine the results of the research study indicated above into dogs and their recognition of people’s motivations and behaviours, and what the results mean for our understanding of dogs and their relationships to people. Read on to learn more.

Research findings

While dog owners have long held opinions about what their dog knows and how adept they are at sussing people out, it is only earlier on this year when the above-mentioned research study’s results were published that we found out for sure!

The study was designed to test out dogs’ reactions to strangers after they had witnessed certain behaviours from them in a human social situation, in which the dog was simply an uninvolved observer.

As part of the study, a sampling of dog owners were asked to play out a scenario with two strangers-researchers-while their dogs were in the room. The dog owners were asked to attempt to open a jar and fail to manage it, while of the two strangers (researchers) one would offer to help and render assistance, whilst the other would either stand passively or outright refuse to assist when asked.

After the interaction was completed, both researchers involved offered the dog a treat, in order to measure what impact, if any, being helpful or unhelpful had on the dog’s perception to and responses to the other party.

This is where things get really interesting, particularly given how undiscerning dogs tend to be when food is on offer-when the two researchers were one who helped and one that did not get involved, the dogs were happy to accept the treat from either stranger.

However, when it came to being offered a treat by a researcher who helped and one who had refused to help, the dogs accepted the treat from the party that helped, while they were much more likely to turn down the treat from the person who had been unhelpful!

Interpreting the results

A wide range of conclusions with potentially far-reaching impacts for our understanding of dogs and how they think can be drawn from the study’s findings, with a few caveats.

First of all, knowing that the dog would accept a treat from as passive bystander as happily as from a helpful one indicates that dogs do not view inaction as a bad thing-they will not mentally penalise people for failing to intervene from a bystander position, and make no value judgements about people who simply keep out of the way.

However, the strong likelihood of refusal of the treat from a person who has actively been unhelpful and uncooperative, and that refused a direct request for help (using the appropriate verbal and body language to indicate this) is very telling. Dogs form strong bonds with their owners and look to them for direction and reassurance, and if a person singles themselves out as someone who is in opposition to said owner (by either refusing to help them or say, actively making things harder for them or doing something the owner does not like) the dog responds accordingly.

Whether or not the refusal would be replicated if the party in question was not the dog’s owner-and so, not someone that the dog is both emotionally invested in and relies upon for their wellbeing-remains to be seen.

However, it does help to indicate more clearly for dog owners that dogs take a lot of their cues from their owners and also, that they learn from observation-so if you dislike someone, your dog will pick up on this. Also, if you walk back into a room and your dog is eyeing someone a little suspiciously, they may have been up to no good-or possibly, simply looking at your photos on the shelf if your dog felt that they should be sitting down and keeping still!