Dogs tend to ignore suggestions from people who are lying. This is what Ludwig Huber’s team at the University of Vienna in Austria found in its recent experiment.
In the experiment, Huber and his colleagues first trained 260 dogs of various pure breeds to find hidden food in one of two covered bowls. The dogs learned to follow the suggestion of a person they had never met—the “communicator”—who would touch the food-filled bowl, glance at the dog, and say, “Look, this is very good!” Dogs appeared to trust this new person when they were reliably following the signal, says Huber.
Once that trust was established, the team had the dogs witness another person move the food from the first to the second bowl. The communicators were either in the room, and also witnessed the switch, or were briefly absent and so apparently unaware that the food had been switched. In either case, the communicators would later recommend the first bowl—which was now empty.
In previous versions of this experiment with children under age 5, Japanese macaques or chimpanzees, the participants reacted in particular ways. If a communicator had been absent during the food switch, it would appear that they couldn’t know where the treat really was. As such, the children, chimps or macaques would typically ignore a communicator who gave honest—but misleading—advice on where the food was, says Huber.
However, if the communicator had been in the room and witnessed the switch, but still recommended the first (now empty) bowl, young children and non-human primates (灵长目动物) were actually much more likely to follow the communicator’s knowingly misleading suggestion to approach the empty container. This may be because the children and non-human primates trusted the communicator over the evidence of their own eyes, says Huber.
The dogs in the new experiment, however, weren’t so trusting of lying communicators—much to the researchers’ surprise. Half of the dogs would follow the communicator’s misleading advice if the communicator hadn’t witnessed the food switch. But about two-thirds of dogs ignored a communicator who had witnessed the food switch and still recommended the now-empty bowl. These dogs simply went to the bowl filled with food instead. “They did not rely on the communicator anymore,” says Huber.
“This study reminds us that dogs are watching us closely, are picking up on our social signals, and are learning from us constantly even outside of formal training contexts,” says Monique Udell at Oregon State University.
Besides, the fact that half the dogs trusted the communicator who seemed to have made an honest mistake could reveal a lot about how dogs process social information, says Udell. “There is both genetic and behavioral evidence that dogs are hypersocial, meaning that many dogs have a difficult time ignoring social cues even when another solution might be more advantageous,” she says. “This is a really striking example of just how often this may occur.”
8. What did Huber and his colleagues try to do first?
A.To let dogs trust a stranger. | B.To train dogs to guide humans. |
C.To communicate more with dogs. | D.To improve dogs’ ability to seek food. |
9. How would young children react when the communicator was obviously lying?
A.They would be misled by the communicator. |
B.They would ignore the communicator’s advice. |
C.They would teach the communicator a good lesson. |
D.They would keep a distance from the communicator. |
10. What did the new experiment show?
A.Dogs tend to follow the communicator’s advice. |
B.Dogs can be easily confused by the food switch. |
C.Dogs can identify whether the communicator is lying. |
D.Dogs can accurately understand humans’ social signals. |
11. What does Monique Udell say about dogs?
A.They are much smarter than humans. |
B.They prefer to stay with honest humans. |
C.They need to be trained to follow humans. |
D.They can be easily influenced by social cues. |