Is my dog judging me? You bet! Dogs are highly sensitive to human behavior.
There are many reasons dogs might spend a lot of time looking at humans. They observe not just our behaviors and routines but our moods and sounds, including language and the emotions behind our sounds as they are trying to understand our behavior – especially as it applies to them. But, there is one more element that we don’t realize – they are evaluating our competence.
First a bit of background…
Some Background
An article in Newsweek last year answered the question “Why Does My Dog Always Stare At Me?”
Dogs watch us for many reasons. For many pet dogs, human caretakers control most aspects of their lives from access to food, water and shelter to social attention and interaction, and even the ability to go outside. Closely observing people can provide dogs with important clues as to what may be coming and what may be attainable in a given moment, which may be one reason dogs become so adept at reading our body language, facial expressions and tone of voice.
In training and performance, dogs learn to have eye contact with their owners and will appear to stare when they are in training situations. This is most notable in obedience trials, where dogs are trained to ‘watch the handler,’ so they don’t miss a hand signal or another important cue. This is also important in running an agility course where dogs watch our hand signals, body language and listen to verbal cues to follow the course. Canine skills are quite sophisticated.
Beyond Observation
So do dogs really judge us? Yes, definitely.
New research in Behavioral Processes Journal studied how dogs evaluate levels of competence in humans.
Dogs are highly sensitive to human behavior, and they evaluate us using both their direct experiences and from a third-party perspective. Studies  have shown that dogs pay attention to various aspects of our actions and make judgments about, for example, social vs. selfish acts. However, until now, it was unclear if dogs judge human competence.
- To investigate this issue, scientists showed dogs two experimenters manipulating a transparent container: one was good at removing the lid to take an object out of the container (Competent person), whereas the other was unsuccessful at this task (Incompetent person).
- After demonstrating their actions twice with different containers, both experimenters simultaneously tried to open a third container which contained food (Food condition; 30 dogs) or was empty (Empty condition; 30 dogs). Dogs in the Food condition looked at the Competent person longer than the Incompetent one, and female dogs in particular were more likely to approach the Competent person. In contrast, dogs in the Empty condition showed no preferences.
- This result suggests that dogs can recognize different competence levels in humans, and that this ability influences their behavior according to the first situation. Study data also indicate that more attention should be given to potential sex differences in dogs’ social evaluation abilities.
Several studies have examined whether dogs can use their own direct experiences to distinguish between humans. For example, dogs learned to prefer a “generous” experimenter who allowed the dog to eat food rather than a “selfish” experimenter who ate the food before the dog could have it. Such preferences are not limited to situations involving food. Another study used social reinforcement instead of food, and showed that dogs preferred an experimenter who behaved in friendly fashion toward them over one who ignored them. These results indicate that dogs prefer someone associated with beneficial outcomes (i.e., food or social treats).
Final note on gender
According to the lead researcher in the study, “female superiority in the social cognitive domain has been reported across many mammalian species including humans. In other words, in many cognitive studies, females seem to show a higher social IQ than mammalian males. And sex differences have been seen in other pup studies. An example of that is that female dogs look at their owners more frequently and longer than males when facing unsolvable task. [And] Female dogs solve significantly more tasks than males in social learning task.
So the next time your female canine family member is looking at you, your thoughts might be “what a good dog.” But, she might be thinking, ‘hey, you can really do better!”