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Most dog owners have seen their dogs showing what we consider to be signs of jealousy. In fact, dog trainers have long been using jealousy as a training tool by removing unresponsive dogs during training, allowing the dogs to watch their handlers working another dog close by.
This appears to be a great motivator for many dogs. But do dogs really experience the emotion of jealousy? Researchers have argued about whetherdogs can become jealous since this requires complex cognition.
In a 2014 University of California, San Diegostudy published in PLOS ONE, researchers Dr. Caroline Prouvost and Dr. Christine Harris addressed this topic. In this study, dog owners had to recount stories of when their dogs were "jealous."
Most of the dog owners described similar characteristics of jealousy that their dogs had displayed in the past. When their dogs were jealous, they would engage in attention-seeking behaviors like pressing up against their owners or going in between the owner and the person who was the object of the jealousy. They would bark, growl, whine, and sometimes become aggressive. Some dog owners also claimed that their dogs felt guilty after being jealous, yet researchers say there is no empirical data that demonstrates a dog’s guilt.
According to the new research paper in PLOS ONE, Dr. Harris and Dr. Prouvost modified a test used to assess jealousy in six-month-old babies. This is the first test used on dogs to measure jealousy.
Thirty-six dogs participated in this study for three different tests. These dogs were videotaped inside their homes by the researchers who recorded the dog's owners ignoring their dogs and focusing on a stuffed, animated dog or jack-o-lantern pail.
In this scenario, the dog owners had to treat objects like real dogs. They petted and talked to them affectionately, pretending that they were real dogs. Next, the owners had to read a pop-up book that played melodies to the pretend dog. Two independent researchers then rated the videos for different forms of aggression and other behaviors that are associated with jealousy.
None of the dog owners were aware of what was being tested and did not know what the hypothesis of the experiment was. In that way, they could not influence their dog's reactions during testing. All testing was videotaped.
The owner then completed a questionnaire and could interact freely between testing so that there would be a limited amount of carryover effects from the earlier tests. Each test took a minute.
The researchers used a stuffed dog that looked real, barked, whined, and wagged its tail for eight seconds after a button was pressed. The participants were told to ignore their own dogs and to focus on the stuffed dog. They also had to do the same thing with a jack-o-lantern and a pop-up book that played songs.
Two raters that were also unaware of the study’s purpose coded the dog behaviors as being present, absent, and with a percentage of the behavior shown such as:
Behaviors were also coded for the brief 30-second period after testing. Here 4 behaviors were seen.
Researchers coded for aggression because it is an emotion that is closely linked to jealousy in humans. They wanted to see whether the dogs would snap or bite the rival object- stuffed dog or book. They noted other signals of aggression such as lip curling, high-tail holding with ears forward, although the ears forward signal was later disregarded.
All in all, the most common indicator of jealousy in dogs was attention-seeking behavior. Dogs displayed this behavior by pushing against their owners or trying to get in between the owner and the object. There were a few instances whendogs tried to make the object go away by pushing against the object.
The latest research regarding infants and jealousy suggests that when children are jealous they will direct their attention towards their mother. Both Dr. Prouvoust and Dr. Harris found that jealous dogs demonstrated the following behaviors:
When testing was done during this period (sessions between testing), the owner put the object down and moved away from it. The researchers found 4 behaviors were present during this stage.
The researchers in this case only noted the presence or absence of attention behaviors in dogs like either observing or ignoring an object. They also noted whether the dogs sniffed the hindquarters of the stuffed dog. Both researchers also tested attachment styles in jealous dogs, and how that linked to jealous behaviors.
The researchers made up a form for the owners to complete regarding how attached their dog was and noted all behaviors that were associated with different attachment behaviors in dogs. They also included behaviors that were linked to anxiety-like a slightly lifted paw, a yawn or of submission, ears flattened, tail down, and licking.
The researchers found that one-fourth of the dogs snapped at the stuffed object when they were jealous. There was no difference in the number of dogs that lowered their tails. All in all, during the post-interaction phase during which the owner was no longer holding the object, a surprising 36% of dogs snapped and showed aggression at the stuffed dog. The snapping was only displayed by one dog in other tests. This was surprising to the researchers because the dog’s owners believed their dogs to be non-aggressive in temperament prior to testing.
This study also demonstrated that dogs that were attention-seeking and very focused on their owners, while being jealous, were more likely to push against their owners and objects, or touch them.
Most surprising was that these jealous dogs would try to go between both owner and object. This behavior is associated with jealousy in humans and is hypothesized by researchers to distinguish this behavior from anger or other emotions.
The research also assumed that dogs did believe that the stuffed dog was a real dog because of the aggressive behaviors directed at it. A reviewer of the research mentioned that the dogs that did not act aggressively, possibly realized that the object was not a real dog. A high 86% of the tested dogs sniffed the hindquarters of the stuffed dog during testing. Both Dr. Prouvost and Harris believed that had the stuffed dog been a real dog, that there could have been more aggression involved.
With that said, the researchers concluded that the pattern of behaviors displayed by these dogs showed behaviors that were very similar to jealous behavior in humans. None the less only 13.8% of the dogs did not sniff the hindquarters of the stuffed dog.
Researchers believe that this was because they were not in a jealous state since they did not try to go between the owners and the object. Many of the dogs that did not snap showed other jealous behaviors like trying to get in between owner and object. 61.9% would push against their owners, and 57.1% would push against the stuffed dog.
So yes, dogs do feel jealous. According to research in PLOS ONE, domestication may have given rise to this because of how strongly bonded we are with our dogs today. Researchers say that it could also be because dogs are able to track a human gaze or see what their owners are focusing on. The research paper also questions whether jealousy in dogs came about because animals need cooperation from other group members to survive.
First Published in The United States Dog Agility Association (USDAA) &The World CynoSport Rally.
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Meet The Author
Claudia Bensimoun
Claudia Bensimoun is a freelance journalist and author, and specializes in veterinary content, and eBooks. She's a long-time feature writer for Animal Wellness magazine, Fido Friendly magazine, and the United States Dog Agility Association. In addition, Bensimoun has written for numerous pet websites, magazines, newspapers and online publications. Her interests include wildlife conservation, animal welfare, disaster/humanitarian relief, veterinary research, and veganism.
