What can they feel?
Emotions are not something we first think of when we think of dogs. Yet, dogs indeed do feel emotions (Block, 1996). Although they cannot tell us how they feel (Nagel, 1974), scientist have generally agreed that dogs feel basic emotions of fear, happiness, anxiety, and excitement.
Secondary emotions such as jealousy and guilt dogs cannot feel. This is because dogs do not have the ability to analyse complex emotions in the brain due to having a smaller cerebral cortex which is where emotions are processed. Comparatively the area that processes emotions is around 20% of a dog’s cortex and 85% in humans (Evans and de Lahunta, 2013).
Recognising Emotions
Dogs do not recognise their own emotional state (Albuquerque and Resende, 2023). In other words, dogs do not think, why am I sad or contemplate why others are feeling the way they are, or thinking will others think I am sad. But they know how we feel. Dogs are remarkable at understanding humans’ emotions and can distinguish between ‘positive and negative’ ones (Albuquerque, et al, 2016, p. 1). Siniscalchi, et al, (2018, p.574) study found dogs can identify the ‘six basic emotion[s]… anger, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise, disgust, and neutral’ in humans.
Dogs can use this skill to ‘aid communication and social interaction’ (Albuquerque et al, 2016, p.4) which helps maintain cross species relationships with humans (Holden, et al, 2014). There is a mutual benefit from dogs and people having some understanding of each other’s emotional cues causing appeasing behavioural responses. Such as dogs who lay with their owner who is feeling distressed; people see this as very comforting. Nagasawa, et al, (2009) suggests that dogs want to ease or release their human from their distress.
Humans are quite poor at understanding dogs emotions beyond happy and angry. Bloom and Friedman (2013) found that people could tell if dogs were happy 88% of the time, angry 70% but fear only 45%, sadness 37% and disgust 13% of the time. People then can misunderstand the emotional state of dogs. Owners will often anthropomorphise human feeling onto dogs such as jealously.
A common example is a dog getting jealous of a couple hugging and the dog, jumps up, whins or barks. In a dog’s mind hugging is not a concept, to the dog, it looks like the couple are fighting, and the dog acts as peace maker and tries to break up the fight (Kujala, 2017).
Another misunderstanding of an emotional response by humans is a dog who looks ‘guilty’. It is likely that there has been a conditioned response to the event like chewing up the sofa. Then the owner returns and shouts at the dog. The dog may look ‘guilty’ which may be a learned appeasement behaviour (Hecht, et al, 2012) but generally it is fear they are experiencing.
When the dogs’ emotions are underestimated people may unknowingly cause maltreatment of dogs, resulting in a global welfare issue (Kujala, 2018). For example, some people think it is funny to dress up and then scare dogs, (see Florida Bushman, 2021) but this will cause emotional trauma and potentially dogs will lose trust in their humans, leading to negative emotions and potentially unpredictable behaviour.
Emotions effect dogs behaviour
The emotional response that is triggered by an event can be;
neutral | positive | negative |
Animals who experience positive emotions to an associated event will want it to happen again (Spruijt, et al, 2001). | Animals are more likely to remember an event if they have a negative memory associated to it (Boissy, et al, 2007). | |
This is why a dog can go from being fine with other dogs for years and then have one bad experience, becoming fearful and aggressive towards other dogs. This is known as one time learning. |
Experiences which invoke strong emotional responses will shape a dog’s to either look forward to an event and want it to happen again or fear it (Lang, et al, 1998).
Dogs can be optimists or pessimists
Pessimists | Optimists |
When dogs feel negatively towards events more often than not, this will impact their welfare. Studies have suggested that being in a constant bad mood makes for dogs who are less curious, less able to learn and have a pessimistic outlook on life (Panksepp and Burgdorf, 2003). The pessimistic mindset could be due to a lack of serotonin and dopamine neurotransmitters which help to regulate mood in a dog’s brain which can cause irritability, lack of impulse control, reactivity or anxiety. | More positive emotional experiences are thought to improve dogs’ overall wellbeing (Boissy, et al, 2007). A dog having long term positive experiences emotionally is thought to increase the chance of the dog having an optimistic mindset (Boissy, et al, 2007) these experiences can be different for individuals based on their personalities. |
Which one is your dog?
Optimist, looks forward to events
Pessimist, doesn't look forward to events
References
Albuquerque, N., Guo, K., Wilkinson, A., Savalli, C., Otta, E. and Mills, D., 2016. Dogs recognize dog and human emotions. Biology letters, 12(1), p.20150883.
Albuquerque, N. and Resende, B., 2023. Dogs functionally respond to and use emotional information from human expressions. Evolutionary Human Sciences, 5, p.e2.
Block, N., 1996. How can we find the neural correlate of consciousness?. Trends in neurosciences, 19(11), pp.456-459.
Bloom, T. and Friedman, H., 2013. Classifying Dogs’(Canis familiaris) Facial Expressions. Psychiatric Times, 16(2), pp.45-55.
Boissy, A., Manteuffel, G., Jensen, M.B., Moe, R.O., Spruijt, B., Keeling, L.J., Winckler, C., Forkman, B., Dimitrov, I., Langbein, J. and Bakken, M., 2007. Assessment of positive emotions in animals to improve their welfare. Physiology & behavior, 92(3), pp.375-397.
Evans, H. E. and de Lahunta, A. (2013). Miller's anatomy of the dog. St. Louis, MO: Saunders,Elsevier Inc.
Hecht, J., Miklósi, Á. and Gácsi, M., 2012. Behavioral assessment and owner perceptions of behaviors associated with guilt in dogs. Applied animal behaviour science, 139(1-2), pp.134-142.
Holden, E., Calvo, G., Collins, M., Bell, A., Reid, J., Scott, E.M. and Nolan, A.M., 2014. Evaluation of facial expression in acute pain in cats. Journal of Small Animal Practice, 55(12), pp.615-621.
Kujala, M.V., 2017. Canine emotions as seen through human social cognition. Animal Sentience, 2(14), p.1.
Lang, F.R., Staudinger, U.M. and Carstensen, L.L., 1998. Perspectives on socioemotional selectivity in late life: How personality and social context do (and do not) make a difference. The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 53(1), pp.P21-P30.
Nagasawa, M., Kikusui, T., Onaka, T. and Ohta, M., 2009. Dog's gaze at its owner increases owner's urinary oxytocin during social interaction. Hormones and behavior, 55(3), pp.434-441.
Nagel, T. (1974) What is it like to be a bat? The Philosophical Review, 83, 435–450. doi:10.2307/2183914
Panksepp, J. and Burgdorf, J., 2003. “Laughing” rats and the evolutionary antecedents of human joy?. Physiology & behavior, 79(3), pp.533-547.
Siniscalchi, M., d’Ingeo, S. and Quaranta, A. (2018) Orienting asymmetries and physiological reactivity in dogs’ response to human emotional faces. Learning and Behaviour, 46, pp.574–585
Spruijt, B.M., Van den Bos, R. and Pijlman, F.T., 2001. A concept of welfare based on reward evaluating mechanisms in the brain: anticipatory behaviour as an indicator for the state of reward systems. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 72(2), pp.145-171.
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