By Ross Pomeroy, RealClearScience, October 9, 2012
Most of us probably don't need another reason to be nice to our dogs, the fact that they're furry, friendly, four-legged animals is reason enough. But just in case you do, researchers at the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany have provided one: Be nice to your dog, and he or she will likely spend more time with you.
Researchers discerned the finding by first exposing 32 dogs (16 male and 16 female) to two similar-looking female experimenters in an enclosed room for 30 seconds each, one at a time, right after the other. One "nice" experimenter would play with the dog subject, while the other "ignoring" experimenter would ignore them. Afterwards, the dog was taken out of the room and the experimenters re-entered. The dog was then brought back in and allowed to freely roam around the room for 30 seconds. During this phase of the experiment, the dogs spent significantly more time in the proximity of the "nice" experimenter.
The experiment, whose result was none too surprising, showed that dogs can develop a preference for a certain human depending upon direct interaction.
The researchers also ran a second experiment, identical to the first but for one difference: subject dogs would watch another canine interacting with "nice" and "ignoring" humans, and then be allowed to choose how to spend free time with the experimenters. In this experiment, there was no statistical difference between the amount of time the dogs spent with either experimenter, indicating that dogs likely don't develop preferences via indirectly observing another dog interacting with a human.
The study was limited by the amount of canine subjects, as well as by humans' inherent inability to discern precisely what a dog is thinking. It was published in the online journal PLoS ONE.
Source: Nitzschner M, Melis AP, Kaminski J, Tomasello M (2012) Dogs (Canis familiaris) Evaluate Humans on the Basis of Direct Experiences Only. PLoS ONE 7(10): e46880. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0046880
http://www.realclearscience.com/journal_club/2012/10/09/why_you_should_be_nice_to_your_dog_106383.html
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