Dogs Understand Fairness, Get Jealous, Study Finds
According to a series of experiments conducted by researchers at the University of Vienna, dogs have an intuitive understanding of fairness and jealousy; they become resentful if they feel another dog is being treated better than they are treated.
Based on a series of behavioral experiments conducted on dogs, researchers found that dogs have a sense of inequity and jealousy when it comes to rewards. In these experiments, dogs who knew how to respond to the command “give the paw,” or shake were normally happy to repeatedly give the paw, whether they got a reward or not. However, if the dog saw that another dog was being rewarded with a piece of food while they received nothing, their behavior changed. The dogs would hesitate significantly longer when obeying the command to give the paw and eventually stopped cooperating.