Recognizing Dog Emotions May Tell Something About Where You Come From

New research suggests that recognizing your dog's emotions depends on where and how you grew up and not on whether you've ever actually owned one.

Researchers from Germany and the United Kingdom, whose recent study was published in Scientific Reports, assessed how experience with dogs affects humans' ability to recognize dog emotions.

While some dog emotions like anger and happiness were easily recognized from a young age - suggesting they could be inherent - the authors argue this ability is mainly acquired through experience.

"Participants with more general dog experience, in particular, were overall more proficient at [identifying] dog emotions than [those] with less general dog experience," the authors conclude.

The findings suggest this skill is mostly obtained through age and experience, even if that experience isn't firsthand while some dog emotions were easily determined early on in life.

For instance, children who participated in the study had limited recognition of dog emotions regardless of their history with dogs or their cultural upbringing. On the other hand, experience for adults mattered.

The authors discovered that those participants who grew up in a "dog-positive culture" - where canines are prioritized and tightly knitted into society - were commonly better at recognizing dog emotions, even if they never owned a dog.

The initial findings recommend that reading dog emotions does not develop immediately in young children, but instead acquired over time from the society we grew up. The only exception, however, was the emotions of anger and happiness - which even children could recognize in a dog's face. 

"These [outcomes appear] to support the co-domestication hypothesis, in that even [kids] with minimal [knowledge accurately] interpret some dog emotions," the authors write.

The authors added that the ability to identify anger is adaptive, as it provides immediate fitness benefits by sending relevant information on likely dangerous situations, and thus bears higher survival costs.

There is, however, another explanation. Recognizing anger is quickly learned through experience, and it could be that this skill was acquired before age five.

Evolutionary anthropologist, Federica Amici of the Max Planck Institute, said the results are noteworthy. The results showed cultural milieu in which people develop instead of the direct experience which dogs that affects humans' ability to recognize their emotions.

Other Theories

There are a few theories where few studies have turned the focus around while most studies have looked into our pets' understanding of us.

For instance, the close evolution of both humans and dogs under the co-domestication hypothesis is said to have occurred in an inherent mutual understanding. Dogs evolved the ability to read human emotions and vice versa as both species grew closer over time.

According to this theory, the ability to read emotions is partially present to everyone - although dog owners may be better at understanding their pets than others.

Actual research looking into the theory has provided mixed results. Some studies say people who are new with dogs are better at reading canine emotions, while others have found no difference whatsoever between dog-owners and non-owners.