Have you ever wanted to
take your dog to work with you, but couldn’t get the idea past your boss?
According to an article in The Economist,
you might soon have some ammunition on your side.
Christopher Honts and
Matthew Christensen, under the guidance of Stephen Colarelli, Ph.D., at Central
Michigan University in Mount Pleasant, wondered if the mere presence of a
sociable, well-behaved canine in the office might make co-workers more likely
to co-operate.
It turns out that it very
well could. At least that’s what their preliminary findings suggest. (The
complete data should be compiled and completed by year’s end.)
They set up two
experiments.
The first brought together
12 groups of 4 individuals—who didn’t know one another—and told them to come up
with a 15-second advertisement for an imaginary product. (Does that sound like
something you’d see on NBC’s, The Apprentice?) Each member of a particular
group was asked to contribute his or her own ideas, but ultimately the group
had to make a joint decision, choosing only one ad.
The other experiment was a
version of the classic game theory problem, “The
Prisoner’s Dilemma,” which shows ways in which two people might not
cooperate with the authorities, even if it’s in both their interests.
For each type of
experiment, some of the groups—both the “Madison Avenue” group, and the
“Ocean’s Eleven” gang—had a dog hanging out with them while they either
conjured up a 15-second ad or worked out a plea deal with the cops. In the
other groups? No dog.
Would there be a
difference in how each group behaved?
It turns out, there was.
In the advertising scenario,
once the project was finished, the volunteers were asked to fill out a
questionnaire on how they felt about working with the other members of their
talent pool. The researchers found that the groups who had a dog hanging
around—wagging its tail and acting doglike while they wrote their mock
ads—ranked higher on qualities of trust, team cohesion, and intimacy than the
teams who were dogless.
In “The Prisoner’s
Dilemma” scenario, all four members of each group were “charged” with a crime.
They weren’t allowed to talk it over, and were given a choice of snitching on
or standing tough. Each individual’s decision affected the outcomes for the
other three as well as for himself. It turns out that the crooks who had a dog
as a member of their gang were 30% more likely to stay in cahoots with their
pals and not snitch.
Christensen told me via
e-mail that he became invested in the study due to “the scant amount of
research supporting/disconfirming the use of companion animals in the
workplace. In many instances, the practices of organizations are spurred by
anecdotal successes or failures and not by scientific inquiry.”
Christensen says, “I’ve
listened to a wealth of arguments for (e.g., ‘I know I would work better if
Scruffy kept me company’) and against (e.g., ‘What about people with phobias or
allergies?’). To date, organizations have been making decisions ... based on
these rational arguments. It was [our] goal to provide practitioners with
scientific evidence.”
He went on to say that
“Canines had a distinctive advantage for the goals of this study. They have
over 15,000 years of shared [evolutionary] history with humans. As such, they
have developed extremely adaptive characteristics. It appeared to us that dogs
act as social catalysts. This is why we decided to utilize groups of [people]
who had no prior relationship [with one another]. It was our belief that dogs
would facilitate the development of certain interpersonal variables such as
trust and intimacy.”
Where did they get the
dogs? Were they chosen for certain behavioral criteria, sociability,
even-temperedeness, etc? And how, exactly, did they temperament-test them?
It turns out that there
were 3 dogs chosen; Dillon (who appears to be a boxer mix), Marceau (a standard
poodle), and Rudy (a Jack Russell terrier mix). Each dog possessed all of the
qualities I had inquired about. And they had an even more important quality:
each dog belonged to one of the members of the research group! Dillon is owned
by Christensen, Marceau by Colarelli, and Rudy by Honts.
But wait a minute. Is this
a good idea?
I think it is. First of
all, it saved the researchers a lot of time in testing unknown dogs. A dog who
isn’t totally housebroken or who barks at strange noises, wouldn’t be a good
candidate. These dogs came “pre-screened.”
Christensen: “Our criteria
were fostered by our desire to meet the requirements of our ethical review
board. We needed dogs that were sociable, well-behaved, and hypoallergenic.
Three dogs matched these criteria. We went through 3 rounds of pilot studies
using the dogs before making our final decision. We had exit interviews to make
sure [the dogs] were not (a) overly distracting and (b) did not frighten the
participants.”
But how, exactly, did the
dogs behave? Which of their social interactions —play solicitation, asking
to be petted, etc.—had the most impact on a group’s overall willingness to
cooperate?
“We are examining the film
of the experiments to determine the role specific behaviors of the animals had
on the outcomes of the group, e.g., did one dog do tricks to get the attention
of participants whilst the other dog sat in the corner?”
I also think it’s fitting
that Honts et all used their own dogs because in my most recent post
here I said that too many dognitive scientists started studying apes and
monkeys, and not enough of them really “get” dogs; so, personally, I think the
fact that the idea for this study came from actual dog owners, and that they
used their own dogs in the study, may be one of the most important elements.
So why did the dogs foster
trust and cohesion in the groups they were assigned to?
There are a number of
studies showing that petting a dog, or even gazing into its eyes, can increase
levels of oxytocin in human beings. Since I believe
oxytocin could be a key agent in creating the social behaviors that enable wolves to hunt large prey animals by working in concert as a
cohesive hunting unit (and I wrote an article about my theory, outlining how this could have happened), I asked
Christensen if he thought oxytocin might’ve played a part in this study’s
results. He agreed that it was probably a factor.
What’s the next step?
According to Christensen,
he and his cohorts “plan to continue, utilizing different control conditions
(possible experimental manipulations: a fish, a cat, a robotic dog). We are
currently in the process of rating task performance and non-verbal
communication.”
Many modern corporations,
such as Google,
already allow (or encourage) their employees to bring their dogs to work with
them. Many American Presidents have had dogs in the Oval Office. Sigmund
Freud’s dog Jo-Jo was constantly on hand during Freud’s analytic sessions (and
may have been helpful in facilitating them!). On a personal note, David Letterman once hired a dog solely for the purpose of roaming around
the studio during his show at NBC: that was my first dog, Charley! That said,
there are obviously certain occupations—heart surgeon, chef, formula-one
driver—where this wouldn’t be a good idea!
By the way, June 25th,
2010 was “Take Your Dog to Work Day.”
Keep this article in mind when it rolls around again next year!
“Life Is an Adventure—Where Will Your Dog Take You?”
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