Dogs can show behaviors researchers describe as jealousy-like when an owner gives attention to another dog or a dog-like rival. Those experiments measure actions—such as interrupting or monitoring an interaction—not a dog’s private emotional experience. The studies reviewed here do not show that dogs enjoy another dog’s misfortune. Unequal-reward experiments test a different question: how a dog responds when a partner gets food and it does not.
What researchers mean by jealousy-like behavior
Dogs cannot report what they feel, so researchers infer possible emotional states from observable behavior in controlled situations. In jealousy studies, the key comparison is typically whether a dog responds differently when its owner interacts with a social rival than when the owner attends to a nonsocial object.
That distinction matters: evidence that a dog interrupts an owner–rival interaction supports a claim about behavior in that setup. It does not establish that the dog experiences jealousy exactly as a human does, or that every similar action at home has the same cause.
What the jealousy experiments found
Owner affection toward a stuffed dog
In a 2014 experiment, Harris and Prouvost tested 36 dogs individually. Owners ignored their dog while interacting with a stuffed dog that briefly barked and wagged its tail, a jack-o’-lantern pail, and a children’s book. Dogs displayed more behaviors the researchers classified as jealous—including snapping, pushing or touching, and getting between owner and object—when the owner acted affectionately toward the stuffed dog than toward the nonsocial objects. The result concerns this experimental comparison, not the proportion of dogs that are jealous. Read the study in PLOS ONE.
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Familiar and unfamiliar social partners
In a 2018 study, Abdai and colleagues compared dogs’ responses while owners focused on familiar or unfamiliar dog partners and familiar or unfamiliar nonsocial objects. The dogs showed more owner-oriented behavior and attempts to separate owner and test partner in the social-partner conditions. The authors concluded that jealous behavior emerged in their experiments and reported that their design could exclude territoriality and dominance rank as explanations. They also noted that whether the underlying emotional state is comparable to human jealousy remains debated. Read the study in Scientific Reports.
Interactions outside the dog’s sight
A 2021 study reported three features of dogs’ responses: they appeared when an owner interacted with a perceived social rival, tracked the interaction rather than the rival’s mere presence, and also occurred when the interaction was out of the dog’s sight. These findings concern the responses measured in that experiment; they do not by themselves prove human-like emotional experience or a particular level of theory of mind. See the PubMed record.
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Is my dog jealous when I pet another dog?
It is possible for a dog to show jealousy-like behavior in that situation: experimental studies found more owner-directed behavior or attempts to interrupt when owners engaged with social partners than with nonsocial objects. But a single behavior at home is not a validated diagnosis of jealousy. These experiments do not establish why a particular dog approaches, pushes between people, or reacts in another way during an everyday encounter.
Do dogs understand fairness?
Reward-inequity experiments examine whether dogs change their participation when a partner receives food for a task and they do not. They do not test whether dogs feel jealous of an owner’s affection or take pleasure in a rival’s bad luck.
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In a 2009 paw-giving study, dogs were less willing by some measures to continue when a partner received food for the same task and they received none. In the first experiment, unequal reward affected refusal and hesitation, while unequal-quality-reward and effort-control conditions did not show the same differences from baseline. A follow-up found longer hesitation and more stress-related responses when the partner received food. These results are about responses to reward allocation and task participation. A 2018 review discusses unresolved questions about the mechanisms and function of inequity aversion, as well as reproducibility concerns in comparative research; it does not establish a settled, human-like concept of justice in dogs. Read the 2009 study and the 2018 review.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Can dogs enjoy when another dog gets in trouble?
The studies discussed here do not directly test whether dogs enjoy another dog’s setback, suffering, or punishment. The jealousy experiments examine responses to owner–rival interactions; the reward studies examine what happens when food is distributed unequally. Neither establishes pleasure at another dog’s misfortune. That is a limit of the evidence described here, not proof that such an experience is impossible.
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