Current Events > Research claims dogs can tell if humans are upset, want to help.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Your dog may act like a good listenerbut does she really notice when you're feeling down? Or does she just know how to deploy a wet nose and a tail-wag to earn treats? A new study says negative emotions are contagious for dogs.

They'll pick up a companion's bad feelings just by sound, whether that companion is human or canine. "Emotional contagion" is the most basic form of empathy, write Annika Huber of the University of Vienna's Clever Dog Lab and her colleagues. We're not talking Counselor-Troi-level empathy, strong enough to reach between starships.

Emotional contagion is just the automatic, unconscious matching of two animals' emotional states.

Earlier studies have found evidence of this feeling-sharing in primates, rodents and birds.

Studies of pet dogs have found signs of empathy, too: When people pretended to cry, dogs offered comfort.

Dogs also responded negatively to the sound of babies crying.

To learn more about emotional contagion in dogs, Huber and her colleagues recruited 53 adult pet dogs. The dogs were a variety of breeds, as well as mutts. Then the team tested the dogs' responses to sad sounds. In different trials, the dogs heard recordings of humans either laughing or crying.

They heard other dogs barking during play, or whining when they were lonely. They also heard sounds that shouldn't carry any emotion, including crickets, birds, rain, and neutral human speech.

The dogs heard the sounds coming from a speaker in an experimental room while their owners sat nearby (wearing headphones and reading a magazine, so they wouldn't sway the results by reacting to the sounds themselves).

Researchers analyzed videos of the trials to see what reactions the dogs had. Did they look to their owners, or walk over to them? Did they look at or approach the loudspeaker? Did they have a negative or uneasy reaction, including barking, whining, scratching, yawning, licking their lips, stretching, shaking, wagging their tails, panting, or freezing?

The researchers found that dogs showed more of these behaviors in response to emotional sounds (humans laughing or crying; dogs barking or whining) than non-emotional ones (nature sounds; neutral human talking).

The dogs also reacted more strongly to the sounds of negative emotions than positive ones. After hearing a dog whining or a person crying, they showed more of the uneasy behaviors, and dogs that froze stayed frozen for longer.

However, there was almost no differencebetween a dog's reactions to hearing a human in distress and another dog in distress. "Despite equal degrees of attentiveness," the authors write, dogs had a stronger negative reaction to hearing the negative emotions of people and other dogs. This could make sense evolutionarily, they add.

If an animal is displaying negative emotions because it's in a dangerous situation, it would be wise for nearby animals to pick up on those feelings. Paying attention to other animals' positive feelings is less likely to keep you alivethough it might help you perfectly time your request for a game of fetch.

https://i.imgur.com/61Gaxb1.jpg

Dogs are bros
---

any decent dog owner could tell you that

---

Good doggos

---

solosnake posted...

any decent dog owner could tell you that

Most decent dog owners anthropomorphize
---

Did this really need researching

---

Seems like it was very beneficial for humans to torture and brainwash dogs into feeling this way.
---

Thought this was known for a while

---

Dogs have emotions? This seems like #FakeNews.
---

next time science man, make a dog sniff out cronoabeerus

---

Wow I guess all the other studies that already proved this just were not enough, whats next for them ? Do dogs understand certain words or just the tone of voice ?

Such a waste of time to retread things we already know.

---

I love this video where a gibbon tries to cheer up a man pretending to cry https://www.instagram.com/p/Bxd2U3HgHlL/

---

Dogs can pick up on the mood of the room better than some people. It makes sense. They don't have spoken word, so unconscious body language is how they communicate.

---

Smackems posted...

Did this really need researching

yes, that way dog owners have more ammo to use against cat owners on the cat vs. dog debate

---

OwlRammer posted...

yes, that way dog owners have more ammo to use against cat owners on the cat vs. dog debate

lol like they need anymore.

Dog Owners have more ammo than the Russian, US, Chinese and Indian military combined.

Cat owners have a straw and pieces of paper. Maybe a broken down WW1 tank that doesn't work anymore.
---

OwlRammer posted...

yes, that way dog owners have more ammo to use against cat owners on the cat vs. dog debate

Cats know if you're upset too.....they just don't care

---

solosnake posted...

any decent dog owner could tell you that

---

No shit lol

---

Solid Snake07 posted...

Cats know if you're upset too.....they just don't care

This. They're way cooler than dogs. Dogs are like Scratch and Grounder, and cats are Sonic the Hedgehog.

---