Reputation-like inference in domestic dogs (Canis familiaris)

Abstract

Humans frequently interact with strangers absent prior direct experience with their behavior. Some conjecture that this may have favored evolution of a cognitive system within the hominoid clade or perhaps the primate order to assign reputations based on third-party exchanges. However, non-primate species' acquisition of skills from experienced individuals, attention to communicative cues, and propensity to infer social rules suggests reputation inference may be more widespread. We utilized dogs' sensitivity to humans' social and communicative cues to explore whether dogs evidenced reputation-like inference for strangers through third-party interactions. Results indicated dogs spontaneously show reputation-like inference for strangers from indirect exchanges. Further manipulations revealed that dogs continued to evidence this ability despite reduction of specific components of the observed interactions, including reduction of visual social cues (i.e., face-to-face contact between the participants in the interaction) and the nature of the recipient (i.e., living, animate agent versus living, inanimate self-propelled agent). Dogs also continued to demonstrate reputation-like inference when local enhancement was controlled and in a begging paradigm. However, dogs did not evidence reputation-like inference when the observed interaction was inadvertent.

Dogs avoid people who behave negatively to their owner: third-party affective evaluation

“…In previous studies claiming dogs' sensitivity to thirdparty interactions (Kundey et al, 2011;Marshall-Pescini et al, 2011), dogs might have approached the person or place that was associated with food. In fact Nitzschner et al, (2012Nitzschner et al, ( , 2014 suggested that multiple cues might influence dogs' choices, such as where donors stood and several features of the beggar's behaviour.…”

“…This sensitivity has been tested in a few nonhuman species including chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes (Subiaul, Vonk, OkamotoBarth, & Barth, 2008), tufted capuchin monkeys, Cebus apella , common marmosets, Callithrix jacchus (Kawai, Yasue, Banno, & Ichinohe, 2014), domestic dogs, Canis familiaris (Freidin, Putrino, D'Orazio, & Bentosela, 2013;Kundey et al, 2011;Marshall-Pescini, Passalacqua, Ferrario, Valsecchi, & Prato-Previde, 2011;Nitzschner, Kaminski, Melis, & Tomasello, 2014;Nitzschner, Melis, Kaminski, & Tomasello, 2012), and Labroides dimidiatus cleaner fish (Bshary & Grutter, 2006). In most of these studies the participants watched third-party interactions, usually exchanges, involving food, which raises the possibility that participants simply preferred actors who were more likely to give them a better chance of getting food.…”

“…Whereas dogs are highly sensitive to human actions directed to themselves, whether they are sensitive to third-party interactions among others has been under debate. Kundey et al (2011) showed that dogs preferred an actor who generously gave food to a begging person over another who withheld it. But in that study the dogs also preferred an actor who 'gave' food to a box rather than the beggar.…”

Do dogs follow behavioral cues from an unreliable human?

“…This study may suggest that dogs evaluate characteristics of actors from third-party interactions, but a simple association between the generous donor and the reward cannot be ruled out. In Kundey et al (2011), dogs observed interactions between a recipient and two demonstrators, who both showed a treat to the recipient but then either gave it to her or not. Subsequently, when dogs were allowed to choose one of the demonstrators, they showed a strong preference for the giver.…”

What Dogs Understand about Humans

“…Dogs might be able to make reputation-like inference by observing third-party interactions (Kundey et al, 2011;Marshall-Pescini et al, 2011; but see Nitzschner et al, 2012). And there is very clear evidence that they evaluate humans on the basis of direct experiences, i.e., searching for contact with a 'nice' experimenter-compared to an ignoring experimenter (Nitzschner et al, 2012).…”