How does your dog judge you?

Karl Hille, The Baltimore Sun on Feb 26, 2026

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Female dogs prefer the competent person when opening a food container, researchers say.

“Dogs are highly sensitive to human behavior, and they evaluate us using both their direct experiences and from a third-party perspective,” researchers at Kyoto University wrote. “Dogs pay attention to various aspects of our actions and make judgments about, for example, social vs. selfish acts.”

The pet dogs tested watched demonstrations by two actors, one who managed to open a clear container and remove an object, and one who failed in the effort. The container could be empty or contain a neutral object or food.

When a person who was previously competent at opening a food container opened a new container with unknown contents, dogs paid closer attention to their progress, the researchers found. In addition, when approaching people later, female dogs in particular showed a preference for the competent individuals.

They published their work in the journal Behavioral Processes in 2022.

They built on a wealth of experimentation that dug into dog psyches.

Prior research showed that dogs prefer experimenters who previously shared food or were friendly to them, which means someone paid for that. Another experimenter found that dogs preferred humans who shared food with a begging person.

To separate food from the equation, another study had dogs watch as their owner failed to open an unknown container and then asked for help from one of two actors sitting beside the dog. Afterward, both actors offered a piece of food to the dog. The dogs snubbed food offered by actors who refused to help, preferring the neutral actor who just sat there. However, if the actor helped, the dogs showed no preference between the helper and the neutral actor, indicating a preference to avoid negative associations.