The ‘Guilty look’ in dogs: what it really means
You come home to find a raided bin, a chewed shoe or a suspiciously empty worktop. Your dog meets you with lowered head, ears back, whale eye, maybe a little lip-lick and a hesitant tail wag. It looks like guilt. But is it?
Quick answer
That “guilty look” isn’t proof your dog understands a rule was broken. Research shows it’s far more likely a response to your cues (face, voice, posture) than an admission of wrongdoing. In other words, it’s appeasement - “please don’t be cross”, not moral guilt.
What the “guilty look” actually is
Many of the behaviours people label as guilt - averted gaze, lip-licking, head and body lowered, paw lift, yawning, are known appeasement or displacement signals that dogs use when they feel worried, conflicted, or wish to defuse tension. Recent studies have documented these behaviours in both dog–dog and dog–human interactions and link them to mild stress.
For the face specifically, scientists use DogFACS (Dog Facial Action Coding System) to code subtle movements - useful for separating what we think we see from what the dog’s muscles are actually doing.
What studies say about the “guilty look”
Classic finding: When owners scolded their dogs, the dogs showed more “guilty” behaviours, even when the dog hadn’t done the misdeed. That tells us the look is driven by the owner’s behaviour, not the dog’s memory of a rule.
Follow-up research: Manipulating whether dogs actually ate the forbidden food (and whether evidence was visible) didn’t change owners’ ratings of a “guilty look” when scolding was removed. Again, the dog’s action wasn’t the trigger; human reactions were.
Why your dog shows it when you’re upset
Dogs are exquisitely tuned to our faces and voices. They can discriminate human emotional expressions and will rapidly avert their gaze from angry faces—an appeasing move that helps reduce conflict. They also adjust to our vocal cues, including harsher tones. Put simply: if you look and sound cross, your dog “reads the room” and offers calming signals.
And yes, those famous “puppy-dog eyes”? Dogs evolved a special eyebrow muscle that makes their eyes look bigger and more expressive to us. It wins human hearts—but it’s not evidence of guilt.
What to do in the moment (and why punishment backfires)
Skip the lecture. Pointing, showing the mess or telling off your dog after the fact teaches nothing about the earlier behaviour. Dogs don’t connect delayed punishment to what happened. It mainly teaches them that your return can predict tension, which increases appeasement signals next time.
Clean up calmly and manage the environment (baby-gate the kitchen, secure bins, put tempting items away).
Prevent rehearsals with enrichment and appropriate outlets (chewables, sniffy walks, settled rest), then teach what you do want (go to mat, leave it, settle).
Use reward-based training. Modern studies show aversive methods (including harsh verbal corrections and e-collars) increase stress and lead to more negative mood states; reward-based methods protect welfare and the dog–human bond.
If you suspect separation-related issues, frustration, or anxiety are behind the mischief, that’s a case for a tailored behaviour plan rather than punishment.
Take-home
The “guilty look” is a polite peace-offering, not a confession. When we respond with calm management and positive teaching, dogs relax, learn faster, and the “guilty look” fades because there’s nothing to apologise for.
References
Horowitz, A. (2009). Disambiguating the “guilty look”: Salient prompts to a familiar dog behaviour. Behavioural Processes, 81(3), 447–452.
Ostojić, L., & Tkalčić, M. (2015). Do owners perceive the “guilty look” in dogs? Behavioural Processes, 111, 97–100.
Kaminski, J., Waller, B. M., Diogo, R., Hartstone-Rose, A., & Burrows, A. M. (2019). Evolution of facial muscle anatomy in dogs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(29), 14677–14681.
Somppi, S., Törnqvist, H., Hänninen, L., Krause, C. M., Vainio, O., & Kujala, M. V. (2016). Dogs evaluate threatening facial expressions by averting their gaze. Animal Cognition, 19(3), 601–613.
Correia-Caeiro, C., Guo, K., & Mills, D. S. (2020). Humans and dogs attend differently to dynamic human emotional expressions. Scientific Reports, 10, 7395.
Déaux, É.-C., Colson, V., & Hausberger, M. (2024). Domestic dogs adjust to human vocal interaction patterns. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 269, 106045.
Waller, B. M., Peirce, K., Caeiro, C. C., Scheider, L., Burrows, A. M., McCune, S., & Kaminski, J. (2013). Paedomorphic facial expressions in domestic dogs: Development and validation of the DogFACS coding system. Behavioural Processes, 96, 1–10.
Vieira de Castro, A. C., Fuchs, D., Morello, G. M., Pastur, S., de Sousa, L., & Olsson, I. A. S. (2020). Does training method matter? Evidence for the negative impact of aversive-based methods on companion dog welfare. PLOS ONE, 15(12), e0225023.
Vieira de Castro, A. C., Barrett, J., de Sousa, L., & Olsson, I. A. S. (2021). Reward-based versus aversive training methods: Effects on dog welfare and the human–dog relationship. Scientific Reports, 11, 11871.
O’Haire, M. E., Kertes, D. A., & Gácsi, M. (2024). Comparing dog welfare outcomes under different training approaches. Journal of Veterinary Behavior, 70, 1–12.
Want to learn more about how dogs communicate? You might like to read my blog about Stress Signals In Dogs
