Dogs are able to recognize human emotions, and they are aware of the abstract concepts of positive and negative emotional states, and not just mechanically react to human facial expressions. This was first demonstrated by researchers on the example of seventeen (!) dogs.
Researchers from Lincoln University (UK) and the University of Sao Paulo (Brazil) conducted an experiment involving 17 dogs. Scientists showed them images and played sounds that reflected the positive (joyful, playful) and negative (angry, aggressive) emotions of people and dogs. The animals, which had not undergone any prior training, were simultaneously shown photographs of human facial expressions or dog faces and played back a recording of a voice or barking.
It turned out that when a photo and an audio recording showed emotions of the same orientation (positive or negative), the dogs looked at the photos for a significantly longer time.
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This shows that their brains have integrated information coming from different senses into a single picture, which means that animals are able to perceive abstract ideas of “emotional states”.
“Previous studies have shown that dogs are able to distinguish between different emotional states of humans based on features such as facial expressions, but this does not mean that they actually recognize emotions. Our research has shown that dogs can integrate information from two different senses, giving them a holistic perception of the emotions of humans and other dogs. This requires a system of mental categorization of emotional states. Until recently, such abilities were observed only in primates, and the ability to recognize the emotions of creatures of other biological species was considered unique to humans, ”says one of the authors of the study, Kun Guo (Kun Guo) from the Lincoln University School of Psychology.
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There has long been a debate in science about whether dogs can recognize human emotions. Many dog owners said that their pets feel the mood of all family members very well.
There is a big difference between a conditioned response—for example, a learned response to an irritated voice—and the ability to recognize various cues that together make up a single picture of another being’s emotional state. Our results show for the first time that dogs are able to truly recognize the emotions of humans and other dogs.
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It is important to note that no one specially trained the animals participating in the experiment, they were also unfamiliar with the people and dogs that were depicted in the photographs and whose voice sounded on the audio recordings. This suggests that dogs have an innate ability to integrate incoming emotional information into a single picture. Since they are social animals, such an ability may be evolutionarily beneficial for them, it is also possible that artificial selection in the process of human domestication of a dog contributed to its development,” comments Daniel Mills, another author of the study, Professor of the School of Biological Sciences at Lincoln University. ).
Подробнее см. N. Albuquerque et al. «Dogs recognize dog and human emotions», Biology Letters, January 2016.