Abstract
Social evaluative abilities emerge in human infancy, highlighting their importance in shaping our species' early understanding of the social world. Remarkably, infants show social evaluation in relatively abstract contexts: for instance, preferring a wooden shape that helps another shape in a puppet show over a shape that hinders another character (Hamlin et al., 2007). Here we ask whether these abstract social evaluative abilities are shared with other species. Domestic dogs provide an ideal animal species in which to address this question because this species cooperates extensively with conspecifics and humans and may thus benefit from a more general ability to socially evaluate prospective partners. We tested dogs on a social evaluation puppet show task originally used with human infants. Subjects watched a helpful shape aid an agent in achieving its goal and a hinderer shape prevent an agent from achieving its goal. We examined (1) whether dogs showed a preference for the helpful or hinderer shape, (2) whether dogs exhibited longer exploration of the helpful or hinderer shape, and (3) whether dogs were more likely to engage with their handlers during the helper or hinderer events. In contrast to human infants, dogs showed no preference for either the helper or the hinderer, nor were they more likely to engage with their handlers during helper or hinderer events. Dogs did spend more time exploring the hindering shape, perhaps indicating that they were puzzled by the agent's unhelpful behavior. However, this preference was moderated by a preference for one of the two shapes, regardless of role. These findings suggest that, relative to infants, dogs show weak or absent social evaluative abilities when presented with abstract events and point to constraints on dogs' abilities to evaluate others' behavior.
Highlights
Social evaluation is a core part of the human moral sense: humans tend to prefer helpful individuals and avoid harmful individuals, behaviors which undoubtedly contribute to our ability to work cooperatively in large groups (Hamlin, 2013)
We found that dogs spent more time exploring the hinderer than the helper (t = −2.27, df = 26, p = 0.032)
Reasoning that the ability to evaluate helpfulness would be beneficial to domestic dogs due to their reliance on humans, we predicted that, like human infants, domestic dogs would show a preference for helpers over hinderers
Summary
Social evaluation is a core part of the human moral sense: humans tend to prefer helpful individuals and avoid harmful individuals, behaviors which undoubtedly contribute to our ability to work cooperatively in large groups (Hamlin, 2013). Some research suggests that social evaluation may be present from infancy. In a first demonstration of early-emerging social evaluation, Hamlin et al (2007) presented 6- and 10-month-old infants with a puppet show in which an agent (a wooden shape with googly eyes) attempted, but failed, to climb a hill. These findings were the first to suggest that social evaluative abilities may be present from very early in life, and have been replicated and extended numerous times (for reviews see Holvoet et al, 2016; Margoni and Surian, 2018; but see Salvadori et al, 2015 for a failure to observe preferences for prosocial over antisocial agents in 9month-olds). This work has led some scholars to argue that capacities for social evaluation may be part of a system of “core” knowledge, which extends to other conceptual domains (Spelke, 2000; see Hamlin, 2013)
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