Can Dogs Feel Gratitude? Science Says Yes

Dogs are teaching us about gratitude. photo: AdobeStock

Can dogs feel gratitude? This is the same question I pondered in last year’s Thanksgiving issue of BayWoof. Here’s what I’ve learned since then. 

Most of us rely on observing dogs’ behaviors to try to understand what they might be thinking or feeling. The problem with this approach is that we may very well be wrong. 

For example, we often attribute human emotions to our dogs: we see our dog look away after digging in the trash and think he must be feeling guilty. But further study of dog behavior and canine body language shows us that these assumptions might often be incorrect (click here for a fascinating read from canine body language expert Brenda Aloff). 

That’s why the recent work of neuroscientist Gregory Berns, Professor of Psychology Peter Cook, and dog trainer Mark Spivak is so important. Working together, this research team trains dogs to sit in MRI scanners to actually see canine brains working during specific events. This allows them to compare the dogs’ brain scans  to human brain scans and determine whether dogs experience the same emotions as humans under similar circumstances.  Through these MRI scans, they’ve demonstrated that the dog brain develops in many of the same ways that the human brain does, at least to a certain extent. 

We now know that humans develop basic emotions from birth up to about 2.5 years of age. Humans are born with the emotion of  “excitement” and then develop other basic emotions including satisfaction, dissatisfaction, repulsion, fear, and anger. By the age of six months, a human baby feels elation, bashfulness, and uncertainty. But more complex emotions like shame, pride, and empathy do not begin to develop until after 2.5 years of age and continue to do so throughout our lives. 

Dogs’ brains, on the other hand, develop much faster than humans, but stop at a much more basic level. At six months, the canine emotional repertoire is equivalent to that of a 2.5-year-old child and does not grow beyond that stage. This means dogs can feel emotions like excitement, like/dislike, disgust, fear, and anger. But they cannot feel complex emotions that are learned such as guilt, shame, pride (click here for an excellent article outlining all this for us non-scientists).

The MRI research shows that when a dog’s brain is being scanned and the dog’s human steps out of visible range, the caudate nucleus (CN) lights up in the same way it does when a human is experiencing distress. When the dog’s owner reappears, the CN lights up in the same way a human’s does when experiencing relief. When the owner presents a hand signal meaning “treat,” the CN lights up with joy and excitement (click here for an interview with researcher Gregory Berns about their findings and here for a New York Times article he wrote on the subject). 

The reason we know that the dog brain stops developing emotionally by six months is that their CN stops growing at that time, unlike the human CN, which continues to develop throughout life. Because the canine CN stops growing, dogs are arrested at the equivalent emotional maturity of a human toddler. 

So, yes, dogs probably do feel grateful when they see that treat hand appear, as this is a basic emotion that human toddlers can also feel (we know they at least feel joy and excitement). But dogs would not be capable of feeling guilt or of plotting or scheming, as some believe. Those emotional complexities require a more developed CN and, thanks to this research, we now have proof that a dog’s CN stops growing before it can experience these states. 

As for me, I’m grateful to be able to share quantifiable proof of this with you, dear dog owner. Now you can know that when your dog looks guilty or seems to be experiencing any other complex emotion, he is simply reading your body language and reacting to that. And knowing this is a foundational element of effective dog training because once we understand that most of our dog’s behaviors stem from what we do and do not do, the rest is cake. 

We can control our own selves, right? And when we learn to do that so that the dog understands and behaves differently in response, we get a well-behaved dog who listens - because we finally started listening. We can also better appreciate his quirks when he inadvertently and unknowingly does something we deem “wrong.”

So next time you catch your dog digging in the trash, instead of thinking he looks guilty, just move the trash to make it inaccessible. Voila - problem solved! Just as we’re the ones with opposable thumbs, we’re also the ones with the fully developed caudate nucleus. So make smarter use of the big brain you have.

Maybe my dog’s brain is less developed. Who cares? I’m just grateful it lets him choose to love me as much as I love him.