Dogs and Deception
A puzzling news item came to me via a fellow writer/blogger last week. Stephanie Stiavetti, who blogs about gluten-free cooking over at Wasabimon, alerted me that the October issue of Behavioural Processes (a journal of animal behavior research) includes a study that seems to show dogs CANNOT detect deception in people. Here, many of us are thinking that our oh-so-sensitive and instinctual canine pals are good judges of character, but in the study’s set-up, dogs did not distinguish in any significant way people who were being honest with them (about the location of a bowl with a treat in it) and those who were not.
Apes, on the other hand, have been shown in other studies to know cooperator from deceiver and even to deceive others themselves.
Lilly clearly understands “other” or “stranger,” as in “You are so NOT the mama.” She has certainly learned that these others can be OK, if they approach with the right context and demeanor. We know from keep away and hide and seek that Lilly shows a certain frustration if we try and “trick” her. For example, Tom will often wait for Lilly to run upstairs looking for him, then he’ll pop out of his hiding spot and just sit on the couch, where Lilly will surely see him when she comes back downstairs. She barks, jumps, and makes funny noises that we interpret as her saying, “You were NOT there a second ago!”
But, she seems to think our jokes or tricks on her make the game more fun. They do not (thank goodness) make her distrust us.
I like to think that Lilly would correctly interpret someone with ill intent. Perhaps simply being untruthful about food isn’t enough to trigger a dog’s sense of good person/bad person.