Canine Reconciliation and Third‐Party‐Initiated Postconflict Affiliation: Do Peacemaking Social Mechanisms in Dogs Rival Those of Higher Primates?

Abstract

Conflicts over food, access to mates, or other limited resources can sometimes escalate into aggression. In species that form social groups, these aggressive conflicts can jeopardize the benefits of group living, such as enhanced access to valued resources, necessitating the development of behavioural mechanisms that either mitigate conflicts, prevent aggressive escalation or resolve disputes. Two important mechanisms for managing the effects of disputes involve postconflict (PC) affiliative behaviour, either between the former opponents (called ‘reconciliation’) or between one opponent and a third party. Even though numerous studies have tested reconciliatory and third‐party affiliation tendencies in primates, for non‐primate animals little systematic data are available. We performed behavioural observations on three groups of captive domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) and used a PC/MC method to test the existence of reconciliation and third‐party affiliation in this species. The results of this study clearly indicate that both reconciliation and third‐party PC interactions are present in the domestic dog, and form important social mechanisms of the domestic dog. Furthermore, familiar individuals showed a significantly higher proportion of reconciled conflicts than did unfamiliar individuals, and also displayed fewer conflicts. Finally, we show that most of the third‐party affiliations involve the victim of a conflict and that victim‐directed affiliation outweighs victim‐initiated third‐party affiliation in these PC interactions.

Why are bystanders friendly to recipients of aggression?

“…32,33,[60][61][62][63][64][65] Moreover, the stressalleviating effect of reconciliation in human children assessed using levels of self-directed behavior 64 has now been confirmed based on analysis of salivary cortisol levels. 8 As the evidence for the stress Canis domesticus Versele-Laga, Deinze, Belgium 26 Corvus frugilegus* University of Cambridge 27 Strengthen partner bonds † Functions are in italics if they were tested in the study. Cells are empty for cases where no function was suggested.…”

“…7,10 The majority of research on post-conflict behavior has focused on reconciliation, the affiliative post-conflict interaction between former opponents, 11,12 but important post-conflict interactions may also occur between the opponents and bystanders uninvolved in the previous conflict. 13,14 In particular, a number of recent studies have demonstrated the phenomenon of post-conflict affiliation directed from a bystander to the recipient of aggression in a variety of species from primates [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] to dogs 26 and rooks. 27 This review focuses on bystander to recipient interactions and examines the variations in their patterns, which are consistent with a number of different functional explanations.…”

“…The first, and indeed the only, study to definitively demonstrate the occurrence of post-conflict bystander affiliation directed towards the recipient of aggression in primate species other than apes (although such contacts have been recently demonstrated in domestic dogs 26 and rooks 27 ), did so only by analyzing different types of affiliative behaviors separately. 25 Stumptailed macaque (Macaca arctoides) victims were found to receive an increased level of post-conflict affiliation from bystanders in the form of sociosexual behaviors, but not allo-grooming.…”

Empathic-like responding by domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) to distress in humans: an exploratory study

“…Hare et al (2002) 36 have argued that the process of domestication has also conveyed advanced socio-37 cognitive abilities to dogs (e.g., Hare selective breeding not only became increasingly tame and friendly toward humans, but 43 also developed a dog-like appearance with floppy ears, spotty coats and curly tails 44 (Belyaev et al 1981;Trut et al 2002). 45 One aspect of the dog-human affectional bond, often sited by pet-owners, is the 46 fact that dogs seem empathically well-tuned to human emotions (Vitulli 2006 however, systematic observational data on post-conflict "consolation" in apes (de Waal & 105 van Roosmalen 1979), rooks (Seed et al 2007) and domestic dogs (Cools et al 2008). 106…”

Stress reduction through consolation in chimpanzees

“…Following Preston and de Waal's (19) discussion of the mechanisms and levels of empathy, consolation may represent an intermediate level that corresponds with ''sympathetic concern'' in developmental psychology (20). Monkeys seem to lack this particular level (21,22), but intriguingly, there is suggestive evidence for consolation in large-brained birds (23) and dogs (24).…”