What Do Dogs Do When Family Members Quarrel?

Source: SC Psychological Enterprises Ltd.

A husband and wife are having a heated argument in the kitchen. It is not surprising that this has an emotional effect on children in the family who happened to be watching. This is the kind of issue that is studied by psychologists working in the field of Family Dynamics. In our modern society dogs are often counted as family members and data has shown that dogs read our emotional states and respond accordingly. However, few researchers in family dynamics have considered what effects familial quarrels might have on a pet dog who is also observing this interaction.

Dogs Are Part of the Family Dynamic

Research has shown that 94% of people consider their pet dog to be part of the family, and 72% of childless millennial women explicitly state that they prefer the company of their pet over the company of children. We do not know what percentage of dogs consider their human owners to be their family, but it would not be surprising to find that the vast majority of them do.

Given the fact that the mental reactions of dogs often mimic those of human children between 2 and 3 years of age, it would seem that a family dynamic approach to dog behavior in situations involving family social interactions, such as disputes, might prove to be an interesting and valuable area of study. This appears to have been the reasoning of a team of researchers from Argentina led by Laura Analía Rial from the School of Medicine, University of Buenos Aires.

The basic protocol followed in their recent investigation involved a staged argument between two family members which was conducted in their own home. It was observed by their pet dog and the experimenters recorded the dog's reactions through a Zoom video connection. There were two separate studies that were virtually identical except for the intensity of the argument and the degree to which the "aggressor" showed belligerence and hostility and the "victim" acted subdued, downcast and defeated.

Responses When an Individual Encounters Aggression

I'm sure that you've heard of some of the typical responses that people have to threatening, aggressive situations, namely "fight" or "flight". The former is to meet aggression with aggression while the latter is to simply run away. There are however two other responses, which are less well-known, perhaps because they are less active: namely "freeze" or "fawn". Freezing means that you "play dead", give no overt reaction and show no threat to the aggressor. Fawning involves trying to please the aggressor, "sucking up" and assuring them that you are on their team already and they don't need to beat you into submission.

What happens after the aggressive incident is finished is also important. Since the individuals are part of a family they must continue to interact with both the aggressor and the victim if they live in the same household. There are several possible behavioral responses here. First, an individual could continue using fawning behavior, keeping company with the attacker, and acting in a subservient manner to try to gain approval from the aggressor. Alternatively they could provide emotional support, comfort and consolation to the victim. Of course there is also the possibility of engaging in flight behavior, such as running away from home or simply avoiding one or both family members involved in the fight. Remember we are looking at the behavioral after-effects of a quarrel which the dog or child merely observed and were not active participants.

The Emotional Effects of Observing a Family Fight

Both of the studies conducted in this recent report had similar outcomes, however the second study (where the intensity and duration of the simulated quarrel was much greater) gave somewhat clearer results and so we will focus our discussion on that experiment.

Watching family members fight caused an increase in stress responses in the dogs, which is the same effect that children experience when watching family members fight. Other research has shown that dogs are capable of distinguishing between positive and negative human emotions and a family quarrel is a sea of unpleasant emotions. The authors summarize this finding saying "Taken together, these results suggest that the expression of negative emotions in people appears to trigger stress behaviors [in dogs], affecting their well-being."

An ancillary analysis of the data showed that the older the dogs were, the more stressed they became when observing family quarrels. This may be due to the fact that they have more experience and thus are more adept at interpreting human emotions.

When they were observing the conflict, the dogs did not try to intervene, nor did they attempt to run away. They simply stayed in place and stared at the combatants, predominantly at the aggressor.

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Consoling the Victim

The most interesting findings of this study occurred in the aftermath of the staged fight between family members. When the argument was finished the two individuals retreated to opposite sides of the room and sat still, not responding to any of the dog's behaviors. Once things had quieted down, 15 of the 23 dogs in this study moved to be close to the victim of the fight, rather than to the aggressor. They then tended to hover around the victim spending more time with them than with their other, more aggressive, family member. The consolation provided by the dogs in this study was mostly directed toward the downtrodden and defeated victim of the encounter. Overall dogs tended to avoid spending as much time near the aggressor.

An interesting additional analysis showed that the male dogs were more likely to show conciliatory behaviors than female dogs, especially when the victim was female. (Furry Knights in Shining Armor?)

Explaining the Behavior

Why do dogs tend to side with the victim? Wouldn't it be safer for them to align themselves with the aggressor who has clearly won this social dispute and who could possibly turn their aggression against the family pet at a later time? The authors interpret this tendency to provide supportive behavior toward the family member who has been the victim of a conflict as a genetic predisposition. Specifically they suggest that the ability of dogs to detect negative emotions and their tendency respond with behaviors offering consolation "is an essential part of their bond with humans" and then they go on to say "This is especially relevant not only for dogs that occupy the role of pets but also for those activities in which they interact with people who frequently express negative emotions, such as patients in physical pain or with psychological difficulties."

In other words, dogs try to console the victims of a family dispute because at heart, all dogs are genetically predisposed to be emotionally supportive therapy dogs.

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