Latest news with #Anthrozoös
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
What Your Dog's "Happy Face" Really Means
Life with a dog is full of joyful, if sometimes baffling, two-way conversations — and as their companions and caregivers, we know when they're happy and sad. Well, perhaps not it seems. According to new research, we might be misinterpreting what our dogs are really feeling. A study from Arizona State University (ASU) reveals that humans often misunderstand their dogs' emotions, largely because we judge their mood based on external context rather than their actual behavior. In their paper published in Anthrozoös, researchers Holly Molinaro and Clive Wynne found that we project human emotions onto our pets, which can mean we misread them. "People do not look at what the dog is doing," Holly, an ASU PhD student in psychology and animal welfare scientist, explains. "Instead, they look at the situation surrounding the dog and base their emotional perception off that." To test this, the researchers ran two experiments. First, they showed people videos of dogs in different situations — some happy (treat time or a walk), some not so happy (mild telling off). Some people saw the full context of what was happening in the video, while others only saw the dog, with no background information. In the second, they edited the videos so that a dog filmed in a happy moment looked like they were in a negative one, and vice versa. The result? People still judged the situation rather than the dog's actual behavior. "Our dogs are trying to communicate with us, but we humans seem determined to look at everything except the poor pooch himself," says Clive, a psychology professor specializing in canine behavior. "You see a dog getting a treat, you assume he must be feeling good. You see a dog getting yelled at; you assume he's feeling bad. These assumptions of how you think the dog is feeling have nothing to do with the dog's behavior or emotional cues." Another striking example was a dog reacting to a vacuum cleaner. "In our study, when people saw a video of a dog apparently reacting to a vacuum cleaner, everyone said the dog was feeling bad and agitated," Holly continues. "But when they saw a video of the dog doing the exact same thing, but this time appearing to react to seeing his leash, everyone reported that the dog was feeling happy and calm. People were not judging a dog's emotions based on the dog's behavior, but on the situation the dog was in." It's not just the surroundings tripping us up — we also have a habit of seeing our own emotions in our dogs. "I have always found this idea that dogs and humans must have the same emotions to be very biased and without any real scientific proof to back it up," Holly says. So, what's the solution? Holly suggests dog owners take a step back. "The first step is just to be aware that we are not that good at reading dogs' emotions," she says. "We need to be humbler in our understanding of our dogs." She adds that every dog is unique. "Really pay attention to your own dog's cues and behaviors." That guilty look after you catch them trying to eat an extra treat — guilt or nervousness about getting told off? A little awareness goes a long way in strengthening our connection with our four-legged friends. You Might Also Like 70 Impressive Tiny Houses That Maximize Function and Style 30+ Paint Colors That Will Instantly Transform Your Kitchen
New York Times
10-03-2025
- Science
- New York Times
Think You Understand Your Dog? Think Again.
Dogs can't talk, but their body language speaks volumes. Many dogs will bow when they want to play, for instance, or lick their lips and avert their gaze when nervous or afraid. But people aren't always good at interpreting such cues — or even noticing them, a new study suggests. In the study, the researchers presented people with videos of a dog reacting to positive and negative stimuli, including a leash, a treat, a vacuum cleaner and a scolding. When asked to assess the dog's emotions, viewers seemed to pay more attention to the situational cues than the dog's actual behavior, even when the videos had been edited to be deliberately misleading. (In one video, for instance, a dog that appeared to be reacting to the sight of his leash had actually been shown a vacuum cleaner by his owner.) 'When it comes to just perceiving dog emotions, we think we know what's happening, but we're actually subconsciously relying on a lot of other factors,' said Holly Molinaro, who is a doctoral student at Arizona State University and the first author of the new paper, which was published on Monday in the journal Anthrozoös. That bias could mislead owners about their dogs' well-being, Ms. Molinaro said. People who want to be attentive to their dog's experiences and emotions need to 'take a second or two to actually focus on the dog rather than everything else that's going on,' she said. The idea for the study was born in 2021, when Ms. Molinaro was just beginning her doctoral work in canine emotions but the Covid-19 pandemic had sharply limited her ability to do in-person research. She was inspired by studies that explore how context clues affect people's perceptions of others' emotions. She was also inspired by a distinctly pandemic-era technology: Zoom. The video conferencing software has a feature that blurs out workers' backgrounds. Ms Molinaro and her adviser, Clive Wynne — a canine-behavior expert at Arizona State — began to wonder if they could do something similar, creating videos that allowed people to see a dog's behavior without seeing what was unfolding around it. And so, while visiting her parents in Connecticut, Ms. Molinaro began recording videos of her family dog, Oliver, a 14-year-old pointer-beagle mix, interacting with her father. In some of the videos, Ms. Molinaro's father did things that Oliver was likely to respond to positively, such as show him his leash or a toy. In others, he did things that were likely to elicit more negative reactions, such as gently scold Oliver or present him with Ms. Molinaro's cat, Saffron. ('He was not a fan,' she said.) Then, after a crash course in video editing, Ms. Molinaro made versions of each video that removed all of the situational context, leaving footage of Oliver, alone, on a black background. The researchers asked hundreds of undergraduates to watch both sets of videos and assess Oliver's emotional state in each clip. When the subjects evaluated the original videos, they rated Oliver's emotions as more positive in the positive scenarios than in the negative ones. But when the context was removed, they rated Oliver's emotions as equally positive in both types of situations. Then, the scientists took things a step further by splicing together footage from different situations — showing, for instance, Ms. Molinaro's father presenting a vacuum alongside footage of Oliver's response to seeing his leash. Viewers seemed to be swayed more by the context than by Oliver's behavior. When Ms. Molinaro's father was depicted doing something positive, subjects judged Oliver's emotions to be positive, even if he had been filmed reacting to something negative. 'There's no evidence at all that people actually see the dog,' Dr. Wynne said. 'They seem to have a sort of a big blind spot around the dog himself.' The study has limitations, including that it was based on the behavior of just a single dog. People might also perform better when asked to evaluate the emotions of their own dogs, Dr. Wynne said, and probably would have noticed signs of intense terror or trauma. (The scientists did not subject Oliver to any extremely negative experiences.) Still, he hoped that the study would be a wake-up call for pet owners. 'I'm taking it to heart in my own life,' said Dr. Wynne, who recently adopted a retired racing greyhound. 'I'm making it a project to learn how she expresses herself,' he added. 'Because if I know what makes her happy and unhappy, well, then I can guide her life toward greater happiness.' Sadly, Oliver did not live long enough to see the study published. 'But it's sweet that he's memorialized in this research,' Ms. Molinaro said.
