Researchers assessed how experience with dogs affects people's ability to recognize canine emotions. Participants who grew up in a cultural context with a dog-friendly attitude were more adept at recognizing canine emotions. This suggests that the ability to recognize dogs' expressions is learned through age and experience and is not an evolutionary adaptation.
How well do we understand the best friend of our species?
To test how well humans can understand the emotions behind dogs' facial expressions, researchers collected photos of dogs, chimpanzees and humans showing either happy, sad, angry, neutral or fearful emotions, as substantiated by the photographers. They then recruited 89 adult participants and 77 child participants and categorized them based on their age, the dog-positivity of their cultural context, and the participants' personal histories of dogs.
Each participant was shown photos of dogs, chimpanzees and humans and asked to rate how much the individual in the photo displayed happiness, sadness, anger or fear. Adults were also asked to determine the context in which the photo was taken (for example, playing with a trusted equal partner; immediately before attacking it). The results of the study showed that while some canine emotions can be recognized early on, the ability to reliably recognize canine emotions is primarily acquired through age and experience. In adults, participants who grew up in a cultural context with positive attitudes toward dogs were more likely to recognize dog emotions, regardless of whether they had a dog of their own.
A dog-positive culture background, one in which dogs are closely integrated into human life and considered very important, can lead to a higher degree of passive exposure and increased inclination and interest in dogs, allowing humans to better recognize the emotions, even without a history of personal dog ownership. “These results are remarkable,” said the researcher, “because they suggest that it is not necessarily direct experience with dogs that affects people's ability to recognize their emotions, but rather the cultural milieu in which people develop. ”
The researchers also found that regardless of age or experience with dogs, all participants could reliably identify anger and happiness. While these results may indicate an innate ability favored by the co-domestication hypothesis, it is also possible that people learn to recognize these emotions quickly, even with limited exposure. Other than anger and happiness, the children in the study were not good at identifying canine emotions. They recognized anger and happiness more reliably in dogs than in chimpanzees, but otherwise identified dogs' emotions as poorly as they did in chimpanzee emotions, suggesting that the ability to understand how dogs feel is not innate.
