Dogs can’t talk, but their body language says a lot. Many dogs will worship when they want to play, for example, or lick their lips and prevent views when nervous or scared.
But people are not always good at interpreting such signs – or even notice them, The new study suggests.
In the study, researchers presented people with video of a dog who responded to positive and negative stimuli, including a leash, a treat, a vacuum cleaner and a fastener. When asked to evaluate dog emotions, viewers seemed to pay more attention to the situational signs of the dog’s actual behavior, even when the videos were decorated to be deliberately misleading. (For example, in one video, a dog that seemed to respond to the view of his leash actually showed a vacuum cleaner by his owner.)
“When it comes to the perceive of the dog’s emotion, we think we know what is happening, but in fact we rely on many other factors subconsciously,” said Holly Molinaro, a doctoral student at the Arizona State University and the first author of the new work, published on Monday in the Anthrozooöös journal.
That bias could seduce the owners about the benefits of her dogs, said Mrs. Molinaro. People who want to be careful about the experiences and emotions of their dog have to “take a second or two to actually focus on the dog, not everything else that is happening,” she said.
The idea for the studio was born in 2021, when Mrs. Molinaro just started her doctoral thesis in dog emotions, but Pandemia Covid-19 sharply limited her ability to do personal research.
She was inspired by studies exploring how context traces influence the perception of people about other people’s emotions. She was also inspired by the extremely pandemic era technology: Zoom. Video conference software has a feature that clings to the worker’s background. Ms. Molinaro and her advisor, Clive Wynne-Strika Behaviore in the Arizona State, have been wondering if they can do something similar, creating videos that allowed people to see dog behavior without seeing what happens around him.
And so, while visiting her parents in Connecticut, Mrs. Molinaro began to record videos of her family dog Oliver, a 14-year-old cursor mix, interact with her father. In some of the videos, Mrs. Molinaro’s father did things that Oliver probably answered positively, such as showing out the leafs or toys. In others, he did things that probably caused more negative reactions, such as gentle Oliver or introduced him with Mrs. Molinar’s cat, saffron. (“He wasn’t a fan,” she said.)
Then, after a collision course in the editing of the video, Mrs. Molinaro made versions of any video that removed all the situation context, leaving Oliver’s shots, on the black background.
Researchers asked hundreds of students to watch both sets of videos and evaluate Oliver’s emotional state in each clip. When the respondents estimated original videos, Oliver’s emotions rated the more positive in positive scenarios than in the negative. But when the context was removed, Oliver’s emotions rated equally positive in both types of situations.
The scientists then made things a step further by connecting the recordings from different situations – showing, for example, Father Mrs. Molinaro, who introduced the vacuum with the recordings of Oliver’s response to saw his introduction
The viewers seemed to be more disturbed by the context than Oliver’s behavior. When Mrs. Molinaro’s father was shown to do something positive, subjects thought Oliver’s emotions were positive, even if it was recorded by responding to something negative.
“There is no evidence at all that people actually see a dog,” said Dr. Wynne. “They seem to have a kind of big blind place around the dog.”
The study has restrictions, including that only one dog was based. People could also be better when they asked to evaluate their dogs’ emotions, said Dr. Wynne, and would probably notice signs of intense terror or trauma. (Scientists have underwent Oliver with no extremely negative experience.)
Still, he hoped the study would be a call for pet owners. “I accept it in my own life,” said Dr. Wynne, who recently adopted a retired Grojhound racing.
“I make a project to learn how to express myself,” he added. “Because if I know what makes her happy and unhappy, well, then I can direct her life towards greater happiness.”
Unfortunately, Oliver did not live long enough to see the published study. “But it’s sweet that it’s memorized in this research,” Mrs. Molinar said.
