People Are Not Really Great at Reading Dogs' Emotions, New Study Says

We like to think we really get our pets. After all, they seem to read us pretty well; studies find that dogs respond to human tears, try to make us laugh, and can smell when we’re stressed. But as much as we love our pups, when it comes to understanding their emotional states, we may not be as perceptive as we think we are. A new study published in Anthrozoös found that humans rely on the outside environment to guess what a dog is feeling, instead of actually reading their behavior.

To test how well people read pups’ emotions, researchers recorded videos of dogs reacting to both positive and negative situations. Positive situations included being offered a toy or praise; negative situations included being reprimanded or seeing a vacuum.

In one experiment, researchers showed humans two versions of the videos: One with full context, and one with without a visual background. In another experiment, they showed humans edited versions of the videos with the context and reactions switched. For example, a participant might see a dog offered a toy paired with the dog’s reaction to being offered a vacuum. Over 850 participants rated how happy they thought dogs were in each situation.

The results were striking. Participants barely comprehended the dogs’ behavior — they focused solely on context. When people saw a dog react to a vacuum, they assumed the pup felt agitation. If they saw the same reaction paired with a dog receiving a leash, they assumed the dog felt joy. “There’s no evidence at all that people actually see the dog,” Clive Wynne, a co-author of the study, told The New York Times. “They seem to have a sort of a big blind spot around the dog himself.”

Holly Molinaro, the study’s lead author, believes that humans anthropomorphize dogs and may project their own emotions onto their pups. “These assumptions of how you think the dog is feeling have nothing to do with the dog’s behavior or emotional cues, which is very striking,” Molinaro told Phys.org.

Researchers hope that the study will help pet parents be more aware of their own biases. Understanding dogs through their own behaviors, rather than a human lens, may help improve their welfare. “The first step is just to be aware that we are not that good at reading dogs’ emotions,” Molinaro told Earth.com. “We need to be humbler in our understanding of our dogs.”