We humans can barely handle accurate criminal interrogations. Human interrogators can induce innocent people to confess to crimes they didn't commit.  There is an eerie parallel to canine behavior evaluations. The dog is, in effect, on trial for their life. The stakes for the dog and the community are high.  We are faced with two problems: (a) a dog who is shown to be innocent during a behavior evaluation, and subsequently turns out to be a danger to society; and (b), a dog who is shown to be a danger to society who would NOT have been a danger if placed. Behavior evaluators (i.e. interrogators) make assumptions about guilt or innocence in a process that is rife with guesswork and biases.

My underling point here is that animal shelters/trainers should/must start making a serious effort to seriously investigate the accuracy of the common behavior evaluation processes. Read between the lines on these studies regarding guilt/innocent/deception and put on your critical thinking glasses.

I know, from painful and quite personal experience, the danger inherent in making assumptions predicting future behavior  during canine behavior evaluations.

How can we perform accurate canine behavior evaluations if we can't deal with human criminal investigations. NONE of the current behavior evaluations take anything as seriously as the attempts to objectify human criminal interrogation techniques.

See:

On the psychology of confessions: does innocence put innocents at risk? Kassin SM Am Psychol. 2005 Apr;60(3):215-28. Review.PMID: 15796676 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

which investigates the issue of innocent people being convicted based on assumptions of guild by interrogators and innocents assuming innocence protects them from coercion. This article concludes with recommendations to videotape the entire process. Throughout the article are statements by interrogators who rely on a system that assumes "that “I’d know a false confession if I saw one.”" (Kassin, 2005). Investigators may even be inducing the suspect to confess by sub-consiously using Skinnerian OC techniques.  "Looking through a behavioral lens, one is struck by the ways in which police investigators can shape suspects to confess as if they were rats in a Skinner box." (Kassin, 2005)

Until recently, most studies of deception/lying have been on undergraduates or children. The following paper looks at the efficacy of using video taped confessions to determine deception attempts by actual suspects during real interrogations. The research is based on in depth examination of 21 videotaped interrogations of actual criminal suspects, observations and codification of body language (ethograms, my students!), and corroboration of the outcome of the interview with evidence attained during legal proceedings. This project attempts to connect the dots in such a way as the result of the interrogation is tied to outcome of the legal proceedings. This was NOT an experiment, per-say. Most research on this subject is done on college students or children.

Behavioral Cues to Deception vs. Topic Incriminating Potential in Criminal Confessions Martha Davis, Keith A. Markus, Stan B. Walters, Neal Vorus and Brenda Connors Law and Human Behavior 29(6), pp 683 – 704, December 2005

If you access the full article, notice the extent to which the researchers have gone to ensure the accuracy of the observations or interrogators and suspects by experimental evaluators. It is NOT a trivial process.

Though the underlying theme here is exploration of the notion of human innocence, innocents being induced into confession, and even found guilty of crimes; and digs into attempts by the suspects to be deceptive — the overall ethical issues rang a bell with me. I've been involved in behavior evaluations of shelter animals that, while undergone with sincerity and diligence, are backed with far less substantial evidence than anything described in these articles.

We put the lives of dogs and safety of the community at stake each and every time we perform any form of behavior evaluation based on gut feel ("This dog is going to kill someone." "This dog is a victim of breed discrimination.") or inadequately vetted research. We are, no different than the stereotypical cigar-chomping cops who claim "I wouldn't be interviewing you if you weren't guilty," and who may assume "I’d know a false confession if I saw one." Just as canine behavior evaluators can enter an evaluation setting raft with personal biases ranging from "kill all pitbulls," to "pit bulls can do no wrong" police interrogate suspects holding personal biases or motivations that are in contrary to the "presumption of innocence" US Judicial System is usually subject to.

Both of these articles suggest, videotaping of interrogations and highly trained individuals involved in the interrogation process.

In a perfect, well funded, world, I highly support videotaping all canine behavior evaluations — AND USING THE VIDEO TAPED SESSION as basis for evaluation. I futher suggest that the evaluation tests used by shelters be subjected to rigorous testing regarding their ability to predict behavior. And that  — and that all evaluators are trained to the point that their observations are shown to be a). repeatable and b). in aggreement with others similarly trained.

Until then, we are stuck with gut-feel testing; commonly used testing procedures which have not been subjected to serious peer review, lack properly blinding, lacking long-term follow ups,  and long term follow up with a low drop out rate; inadequately trained testers; and testers who are unavoidably hindered by breed bias, time,  and budgetary pressure.