Happy People Often Think Their Dog Looks Sad, New Study Says

Humans and dogs have lived together for a very long time. But even after more than 10,000 years of existing side-by-side, people are still pretty bad at picking up on dogs’ emotional states. A new study from Arizona State University found that a person’s mood influences their perceptions of a dog’s feelings — but not in the way you might think. In fact, humans tended to mischaracterize dog moods as the opposite of their own.

Studies have found that when people are happy, they’re more likely to read other humans as happy. Initially, the researchers assumed that this would be the case when it came to people judging dogs’ emotions, too. But in fact, the very opposite was true.

“In this domain of how people understand dogs’ emotions, I’m continuously surprised,” study co-author Clive Wynne, a professor of psychology and director of the Canine Science Collaboratory at ASU, told Phys.org. “I feel like we are just scratching at the surface of what is turning out to be quite a big mystery.”

The researchers gathered footage of three dogs — Oliver, a 14 year-old mixed breed; Canyon, a one-year-old Catahoula Leopard Dog; and Henry, a three-year-old French Bulldog — reacting in positive, neutral, and negative ways. Adorably, prompting positive responses meant treats for Oliver, a toy for Canyon, and the word “Grandma” for Henry. The negative moods were triggered by a cat for Oliver and the evil vacuum cleaner for Canyon and Henry.

Researchers then edited the videos onto a black background to provide the most neutral viewing experience possible. Then, they recruited 300 undergraduate students and showed them photos from the Nencki Affective Picture System (NAPS) — a standardized set of images of animals, landscapes, faces, objects, and people used by psychologists to induce positive, neutral, and negative moods. Once the students viewed the image sets, they then watched the footage of the dogs and rated how happy or sad each dog looked.

In this first experiment, the researchers found that people’s moods did not impact how they rated the emotional state of dogs. The team tried to make sense of this unexpected result by running another round of experiments. They theorized that maybe the priming images relied too much on pictures of people.

“We thought what if we use priming images that were actually dogs — a dog playing in the park, a puppy in a teacup, for example, or a dog that looks sad behind bars or a dog left on the side of the street,” Holly Molinaro, president and senior animal welfare scientist at Animal Wellbeing Solutions, said to Phys. 

Using a new set of 300 undergraduate participants, they repeated the experiment using only photos of dogs to prime their moods. Again, the priming photos successfully impacted the participants’ emotional states. This time, though, when they were shown the photos of Oliver, Canyon, and Henry, the anticipated effect went in the opposite direction. 

“All those that saw the happy dog images rated the dogs as more sad,” explained Molinaro. “And all those who saw the sad dog images rated the dogs in the videos as happier.” In other words, if you’re in a good mood, you may be more likely to think a dog is sad — and vice versa.

Additionally, participants’ emotional states were improved just by looking at the dogs in general, whether or not the dog themself was in a positive or negative mood. Now that’s the power of a cute dog. 

Overall, this study notes that there is a big gap between what we think our dogs our feeling and what they’re actually feeling. Research like this study helps humans understand dogs better, so that we can bridge that communication gap.

“To give our dogs their best lives it is important that we understand how our dogs are feeling,” Wynne told Newsweek. “People have strong intuitions about their dogs’ moods, but our research shows that these intuitions are often wrong and biased by many aspects of the world around dogs and people. We strive to help people understand their dogs better so they can lead richer and more satisfying lives together.”