Your Dog Is Judging You—Well, Only If She’s a Girl, Study Says

She is watching your every move.

October 16, 2024

Yes, your dog is judging you. That is, if your dog is a female. Have a male dog? You may be living in a judgment-free zone. In other words, according to a 2022 study, female dogs are more critical than the gymnastics judges at the Olympics. More so, they care about competence — they evaluate people and respond accordingly. Males don’t act the same way (at least not those observed in the study).

She may judge, just not about your ability to open a pickle jar.

In the study, researchers set up an experiment to investigate dogs’ ability to recognize competence in people and to see if they adjusted their own behavior depending on whether a person was or was not competent. Dogs watched two people try to open an empty container. One person was successful at opening it, and one person failed in their attempt.

The people then repeated this with a different container, with each person consistently either being the competent one or the incompetent one (mimicking real life for those of us who have never opened a pickle jar on their own). Then, the people simultaneously tried to open a third container, and researchers observed the dogs’ behavior. Half the dogs (30 of them) were watching people try to open containers with food inside and the other half (30 dogs) were watching people try to open empty containers.

The dogs were faced with a choice of heading over to the person who struggled to open the container or the person who opened it with ease. Although male dogs showed no preference for one person over the other, 83 percent of the female dogs chose to approach the person who was competent. There’s no evidence that the dogs were thinking, Game recognizes game, but I like to think that they were.

When faced with people trying to open empty containers, neither male nor female dogs showed any preference for competent people over incompetent people. That means these dogs cared more about competence when it mattered than when it was irrelevant. The female dogs had no reason to care about a person’s ability to open an empty container, which makes sense.

Dogs are careful observers.

Dogs have evolved alongside humans, and during the thousands of years they have closely associated with people, they have developed high-level abilities to pay attention to us and understand our behavior and emotions. They have previously been shown to distinguish between selfish and giving people (those who share treats versus those who want it all themselves), and friendly people versus people who paid no attention to them. Dogs benefit from associating with generous or friendly people, and they also gain resources if they choose to be around competent people rather than those who are incompetent.

Another difference between the males and the females in this experiment was that female dogs looked at the people for a longer duration of time. That is consistent with a number of studies that show differences between the sexes. Female dogs looked longer at pictures of dog and human faces than male dogs did. Females looked at their people more frequently and for a longer amount of time when they were stumped trying to solve a task. They also looked at their people longer after being given oxytocin.

Future research is needed to explore whether dogs evaluate competence in other situations, and whether males ever pay attention to competence. For now, remember science only has evidence that points toward your sweet, smart, perfect (and yes, judgmental) girl dog.

References:

Karen B. London, PhD, CAAB, CPDT-KA

Karen B. London, Ph.D., is a Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist and Certified Professional Dog Trainer who specializes in working with dogs with serious behavioral issues, including aggression, and has also trained other animals including cats, birds, snakes, and insects. She writes the animal column for the Arizona Daily Sun and is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Northern Arizona University. She is the author of six books about training and behavior, including her most recent, Treat Everyone Like a Dog: How a Dog Trainer’s World View Can Improve Your Life.