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Dogs prefer advice from knowledgeable people


Claire.

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Dogs Prefer Advice From People Who Actually Have the Answers

We are learning that in many ways dogs are much more like people then we thought they were. Consider the following very human situation. A woman is told "If you are holding any mutual funds you should liquidate them soon because a crash is coming in the mutual fund market." How likely is she to follow this advice if the person speaking to her is her hairdresser? Would she be more likely to take the suggested action if the person was a professional financial advisor?

Read more: Psychology Today

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Very nice article. As the author says, another way to characterize the results (besides the 'headline') is that dogs have a cross-species "theory of mind," the quality of being able to infer what others know, and reason about that separately from what you know about the situation (or in this case, what you don't know - where's the treat?).

This is not the first evidence for that. We wouldn't have gotten together in the first place unless both wolves and people had figured out that we have complementary senses and abilities. We can do more together than the sum of what we can do separately. Both wolves and humans make other alliances with other species for the same reasons (wolves and crows, for example), but wolf and human is about the most successful partnership ever.

 

Edited by eight bits
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