Choosing isn’t always a walk in the park: Dog food preference versus choice

Preferences underpin a range of fitness behaviors for many mammals such as foraging, object interactions, and even social relationships. Despite the ubiquity of domestic dogs in modern culture, the basis for preferences driving their behavior and choices are not well understood. Past work has found that dogs perceive and respond to certain characteristics of items, specifically an object's familiarity and quality when making choices. However, in the real world, these characteristics don't exist in isolation, and understanding the interaction between familiarity and valuation as they relate to object choice can provide insight into how dogs make decisions. We aimed to explore how item familiarity and quality intersect to form dogs’ preferences for one food over another in a series of two-alternative forced choice tasks. Over three studies, dogs (N = 125) were presented with a classic preference test between two items of unequal quality (Study 1), systematic pairings of four items that contrasted familiarity and quality (Study 2), and aggregates of two items of unequal quality (Study 3). Overall, we found that dogs' choices were driven only by the quality of the food item, and the prior familiarity of the item did not impact choice behavior. Determining what motivates dogs and contributes to their preferences has implications for understanding decision-making at large, as well as for advancing canine science.