Total Cat Mojo: The Ultimate Guide to Life with Your Cat

by Jackson Galaxy

Do Animals Know When They’ve Done Something Wrong? People often describe their companion animals as “knowing they have done something wrong.” So Dr. Alexandra Horowitz set out to determine if what humans perceived as a “guilty look” in dogs was actually related to being guilty, or if the “look” was just a response to the dog being scolded. In the study, dog guardians were instructed to show their dogs a treat and then command them not to eat it with a stern “No.” The guardian placed the treat on the floor out of their dogs’ reach and left the room. Then the experimenter either took the treat away or allowed the dogs to eat the treat. When the guardians returned to the room a few moments later, they were either misinformed or told the truth about whether their dogs ate the treat. If the guardians thought their dogs obeyed them, they greeted them in a friendly manner. If they thought the dogs disobeyed them, they scolded them. Guardians attributed behaviors like avoiding eye contact, rolling over, dropping the tail, and moving away from them as signs of “guilt.” But these behaviors were only dependent on whether the human scolded the dog, and not on whether the dog was actually “guilty” of eating the treat when the guardian told him not to. The experiment showed that dogs weren’t experiencing guilty feelings about eating that treat, but that they likely experienced fear and anxiety when scolded by their human. And if you see those “guilty-looking” behaviors in your cats, the...