A former postdoctoral research fellow with Ostrander, Melissa Fleming, has developed an assay that attempts to quantify certain innate breed-specific behavioral differences. Newfoundlands, in contrast, not only would fail to stare at the car but would not even react to it unless it ran directly into them. Other studies have turned up some remarkably narrow and distinctive behavioral lineages that further demonstrate the extent to which canine behavior is genetically determined. Dogs are social animals, and so are we. Dog society consists of a strong dominance hierarchy in which submission to and appeasement of higher-ranking animals is necessary to survival.
Dominance hierarchies avoid violence for the most part, but the threat of violence is ever present.
Thus reading social cues adeptly, down to such details of body language as a flick of the ear or the angle of a tail, is the most basic of canine instincts. They figure out what's expected of them in a social situation and do it. Even people who are very bad animal trainers can usually make themselves understood to dogs. If you shout at a dog, it cringes. The fact is that it doesn't matter, as far as the dog is concerned, whether he feels sorry or not.