I believe that my dog felt guilt, because when I would come home and find he’d gotten into the garbage and strewn it around the kitchen, he would use body language very similar to that of a human who was feeling guilt. (The dog was not picking up on my emotions, because I usually hadn’t seen the mess yet, and didn’t know what he’d done until his body language told me.)
This body language has much in common with submissive body language, which is partly shared between canines and primates.
So ancestral “guilt” could have been “the emotion you feel after disobeying the alpha”, which helps you display submission and also not do it again so you don’t get beaten again. It could originally have just been a type of fear. (Perhaps it still is!)
This is compatible with Yvain’s explanation—it would have the effect Yvain described; consistent guilty behavior would provide evidence that you would be likely to obey the alpha even in his/her absence. But the origin could be simpler than that.
The dog behaviorist Alexandra Horowitz says that dogs don’t feel guilt or act guilty; they just act submissive to appease the alpha. She’s run experiments that seemed to indicate this. Your anecdote is exactly the kind of thing she says shouldn’t happen, although maybe he was anticipating your anger and trying to compensate in advance.
I observed the same thing in a dog we had several years ago. Sometimes we never found out what she’d done wrong, but we knew it was something she believed was pretty bad because she’d slink around with her stomach almost dragging along the ground for hours.
I believe that my dog felt guilt, because when I would come home and find he’d gotten into the garbage and strewn it around the kitchen, he would use body language very similar to that of a human who was feeling guilt. (The dog was not picking up on my emotions, because I usually hadn’t seen the mess yet, and didn’t know what he’d done until his body language told me.)
This body language has much in common with submissive body language, which is partly shared between canines and primates.
So ancestral “guilt” could have been “the emotion you feel after disobeying the alpha”, which helps you display submission and also not do it again so you don’t get beaten again. It could originally have just been a type of fear. (Perhaps it still is!)
This is compatible with Yvain’s explanation—it would have the effect Yvain described; consistent guilty behavior would provide evidence that you would be likely to obey the alpha even in his/her absence. But the origin could be simpler than that.
Testable predictions:
you should feel measurably less guilty doing things that harm subordinates, than things that harm superiors
if you are the absolute alpha, guilt should disappear
if you are a local alpha, guilt should disappear in that local context, while reappearing in a context where your superior disapproves
Some of the existing psychological results seem consistent with such claims: http://lesswrong.com/lw/dtg/notes_on_the_psychology_of_power/
That seems remarkably similar to most people’s actual behavior within dominance hierarchies, as I have observed them.
The dog behaviorist Alexandra Horowitz says that dogs don’t feel guilt or act guilty; they just act submissive to appease the alpha. She’s run experiments that seemed to indicate this. Your anecdote is exactly the kind of thing she says shouldn’t happen, although maybe he was anticipating your anger and trying to compensate in advance.
I observed the same thing in a dog we had several years ago. Sometimes we never found out what she’d done wrong, but we knew it was something she believed was pretty bad because she’d slink around with her stomach almost dragging along the ground for hours.