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We here studied some potential factors underlying variation in compliance with preventive behaviors against COVID-19 by studying mask wearing during outdoor recreational activities in a midsize city of Argentina in 2020. The originality of present research relies on the complementation of observational (N = 15,507) and survey (N = 578) data and in assessing the determinants of and disposition to the same preventive behavior across activities. In Study 1, we did 8 weeks of unobtrusive systematic observation of mask wearing in outdoor recreational sites as a function of activity (walking, running, and cycling). In Study 2, we ran an online survey (concomitant with the last weeks of the observational study) to measure self-reported mask use and relevant beliefs, including self- and other-regarding motives. Behavioral observations showed that mask wearing declined over time for the three activities as predicted from a social dilemma perspective; nonetheless, compliance significantly differed across activities. Self-reported mask use was predicted by the perceived risk of contagion for the self and for others, perceived comfort costs of wearing masks, and social norms, but not by perceived illness severity or mask effectiveness. We discuss some implications and limitations of present findings for the development of preventive strategies to reduce COVID-19 transmission., (© 2021 The International Association of Applied Psychology.)

Rescue behavior is a kind of prosocial response that involves the provision of help to a stressed individual. This behavior has been observed in domestic dogs assisting their owners when they pretended to be trapped. Given the role of the hormone oxytocin as a facilitator for prosocial behavior, we aimed to evaluate the effects of its intranasal administration on the rescue behavior of dogs directed to their owners. In addition, we used the Monash Dog Owner Relationship Scale (MDORS) to assess whether the dog-owner bond was associated with this behavior. After receiving either oxytocin or saline, dogs participated in a stressed condition in which their owner pretended to be stressed inside of a box, or a control one, in which the owner was in a calm state. Dogs released their owners more frequently in the stressed condition. Contrary to our expectations, dogs who received oxytocin were less likely to open the box and took longer to do so than those that received saline. Regarding the dog-owner bond, dogs in the stressed condition who received oxytocin exhibited a lower rate and a higher latency of openings the more intense the bond was, while the opposite pattern was observed in dogs in the control condition who received saline. In conclusion, dogs would rescue their owners when they pretended to be trapped and stressed. Both oxytocin administration and the bond with the owner appear to modulate this behavior, but further studies are needed to inquire into the involved mechanisms., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

When confronted with a difficult or impossible problem, dogs tend to look back at humans and try to catch their attention, instead of trying to solve it themselves. This behavior has been interpreted as a help request, but it is debated whether dogs take into account prior experiences with people when selecting whom to turn to. In the present study, dogs were trained to discriminate between a generous experimenter who gave them food and a selfish one that took it away. After assessing that they had established a preference for the generous one, we exposed them to an unsolvable task in which food was locked inside a container, while the experimenters stood on each side of the apparatus. During this task, we measured their behaviors towards each experimenter. Results showed that dogs did not first turn to the generous experimenter. However, they gazed more at the generous experimenter during the task, which implies that they did, to some degree, selectively ask for help based on previous interactions. Moreover, they gazed more and spent significantly more time in contact with the female experimenter when she was generous, suggesting a possible synergic effect of the experimenters' ID (male/female) and their attitude (generous/selfish). All in all, these results suggest that, to some extent, dogs are able to use the information from previous interactions with unknown humans to selectively ask for help.

When faced with unsolvable or difficult situations dogs use different behavioral strategies. If they are motivated to obtain rewards, they either try to solve the problem on their own or tend to interact with a human partner. Based on the observation that in problem situations less successful and less perseverant dogs look more at the humans' face, some authors claim that the use of social strategies is detrimental to attempting an independent solution in dogs. Training may have an effect on dogs' problem-solving performance. We compared the behavior of (1) untrained, (2) trained for recreational purposes, and (3) working dogs: assistance and therapy dogs living in families ( N = 90). During the task, dogs had to manipulate an apparatus with food pellets hidden inside. We measured the behaviors oriented toward the apparatus and behaviors directed at the owner/experimenter, and ran a principal component analysis. All measures loaded in one factor representing the use of the social strategy over a more problem-oriented strategy. Untrained dogs obtained the highest social strategy scores, followed by dogs trained for recreational purposes, and assistance and therapy dogs had the lowest scores. We conclude that assistance and therapy dogs' specific training and working experience (i.e., to actively help people) favors their independent and more successful problem-solving performance. General training (mainly obedience and agility in this study) also increases problem-oriented behavior., (Copyright © 2020 Carballo, Cavalli, Gácsi, Miklósi and Kubinyi.)

Rescue behavior is considered a type of pro-social response, defined as a voluntary action directed to benefit another individual who is in a stressful or dangerous situation. In two experiments, we investigated whether dogs would rescue their owners when the person was trapped inside a wooden box and emitted clear signs of stress. The performance of these dogs was compared against that of a control group in which the owners remained calm while trapped. In addition, to assess if training modulated this behavior, we tested a group of dogs from the military trained in search and rescue tasks (Experiment 1). Results showed that dogs opened the box more frequently when the owner pretended to be stressed than when calm. Training shortened latencies to open the door but not the frequency of the behavior. In Experiment 2, we investigated if emotional contagion could be a possible mechanism underlying dogs' rescue responses by measuring dogs' behavior, heart rate, and saliva cortisol level in the stressed and calm conditions, and also controlled for obedience by having the calm owners call their pets while trapped. We replicated the findings of Experiment 1 as more dogs opened the door in the stressed owner condition than in the calm condition. In addition, we observed an increase in heart rate across trials in the stressed condition and a decrease across trials in the calm condition, but no differences in cortisol levels or stress-related behaviors between conditions. In brief, we found evidence that approximately half of the dogs without previous training showed spontaneous rescue behaviors directed to their owners. Neither was this behavior motivated by obedience nor by the motivation to re-establish social contact with the owner. We conclude that emotional contagion is a plausible mechanism underlying dogs' rescue behavior in the present protocol.

There is some dispute regarding the role of experience in the development of dogs´ socio-cognitive abilities in their interaction with people. We sought to provide new evidence to this debate by comparing dogs with contrasting levels of experience with humans, in a task involving the discrimination of human generous and selfish attitudes. To this end, we compared the performance of adult family dogs against that of adult shelter dogs and puppies living in people´s homes. In training trials, the generous experimenter (G) signaled the bowl with food and allowed the dog to eat, whereas the selfish experimenter (S) also signaled the baited bowl, but she/he ate the food before the dog could have access to it. Then, subjects were allowed to freely choose between G and S in the choice test. The main finding was that adult subjects (both family and shelter dogs) developed a preference for G over S, but puppies did not. We conclude that the quality and/or quantity of everyday-contact with people did not affect the discrimination of human attitudes in the present protocol, but the amount of experience with people (in years) did matter. Finally, we discuss the relative role of domestication and ontogeny in the development of dogs´ socio-cognitive abilities.

The presence of direct reciprocity in animals is a debated topic, because, despite its evolutionary plausibility, it is believed to be uncommon. Some authors claim that stable reciprocal exchanges require sophisticated cognition which has acted as a constraint on its evolution across species. In contrast, a more recent trend of research has focused on the possibility that direct reciprocity occurs within long-term bonds and relies on simple as well as more complex affective mechanisms such as emotional book-keeping, rudimentary and higher forms of empathy, and inequity aversion, among others. First, we present evidence supporting the occurrence of long-term reciprocity in the context of existing bonds in social birds and mammals. Second, we discuss the evidence for affective responses which, modulated by bonding, may underlie altruistic behaviours in different species. We conclude that the mechanisms that may underlie reciprocal exchanges are diverse, and that some act in interaction with bonding processes. From simple associative learning in social contexts, through emotional contagion and behavioural mimicry, to empathy and a sense of fairness, widespread and diverse social affective mechanisms may explain why direct reciprocity may not be a rare phenomenon among social vertebrates., (© 2015 International Union of Psychological Science.)

Domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) are notably skillful in following cues from people (e.g., pointing gestures). However, not much is known about the processing of information available during such tasks. We here focus on one of the earliest of such processes, namely attention. The goal of the present work was to describe variations in dogs' attention towards diverse targets while they solve an object choice task with human pointing. The direction of subjects' gaze was measured in the period comprising one second before and two seconds after the experimenter called the dog and simultaneously performed a static distal pointing gesture towards the correct bowl. We did two consecutive training phases: acquisition and extinction. Dogs spent more time watching the pointer than the pointing gesture itself and the correct than the incorrect bowl. Indeed, the time spent watching the correct bowl was the best predictor of correct choices across phases. We discuss the relevance of these findings for the process of local enhancement., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Discrimination of and memory for others' generous and selfish behaviors could be adaptive abilities in social animals. Dogs have seemingly expressed such skills in both direct and indirect interactions with humans. However, recent studies suggest that their capacity may rely on cues other than people's individual characteristics, such as the place where the person stands. Thus, the conditions under which dogs recognize individual humans when solving cooperative tasks still remains unclear. With the aim of contributing to this problem, we made dogs interact with two human experimenters, one generous (pointed towards the food, gave ostensive cues, and allowed the dog to eat it) and the other selfish (pointed towards the food, but ate it before the dog could have it). Then subjects could choose between them (studies 1-3). In study 1, dogs took several training trials to learn the discrimination between the generous and the selfish experimenters when both were of the same gender. In study 2, the discrimination was learned faster when the experimenters were of different gender as evidenced both by dogs' latencies to approach the bowl in training trials as well as by their choices in preference tests. Nevertheless, dogs did not get confused by gender when the experimenters were changed in between the training and the choice phase in study 3. We conclude that dogs spontaneously used human gender as a cue to discriminate between more and less cooperative experimenters. They also relied on some other personal feature which let them avoid being confused by gender when demonstrators were changed. We discuss these results in terms of dogs' ability to recognize individuals and the potential advantage of this skill for their lives in human environments.