Looking into the eyes of our new puppy, Kit Kat, it is hard not to feel as if she understands me. While I usually describe myself as a cat person, our family cats have never evoked the same feeling of “understanding” for me as our family dogs have, even though the cats arguably spend much more time curled up next to me. The same is true of the many other species that I have worked with throughout my career. For example, gazing into the eyes of the salamanders currently in my lab does nothing for me emotionally.
Researchers and animal enthusiasts alike have long questioned whether this rich emotional interspecies bond that seems to arise between dogs and humans really does exist to the degree that humans think it does and, if so, what gave rise to it. That is, while humans commonly feel as if dogs understand us and care about us, do they really? Or, is that perception just a reflection of our own anthropomorphism, wishful thinking, or “want” for understanding that we may be missing in our human relationships?
As Vitulli describes, many dog owners certainly feel as if their dogs are in tune with their emotions and feel as if their dogs are very responsive to their emotional needs, from playfulness to happiness to sadness. Interestingly, such reports of responsiveness by owners are not limited to therapy dogs, which meshes well with Frederickson-MacNamara’s observation that most therapy dog certifications are selective for obedience rather than particular dogs’ finely-tuned empathic abilities. Perhaps, though, if dogs’ responsiveness improves the way humans feel, it matters little to the human in question whether we’re misinterpreting obedience as responsiveness.
Dogs certainly appear sensitive to some of the emotional states of humans, particularly when a human feels “blue” or distressed. Like humans, dogs become stressed by babies’ cries and whining regardless of whether the cries and whines are produced by a dog or by a human and regardless of whether they knew the human producing the cries or whines. And as we have noted earlier in this blog, dogs can read people’s facial expressions.
The article by Sanford, Burt, and Meyers-Manor in the special issue of Learning & Behavior, Timmy’s in the well: Empathy and prosocial helping in dogs, examines whether dogs move beyond merely noticing and becoming stressed by humans’ suffering or anguish, to actually taking action. Various researchers have attempted to unpack whether diverse species will respond to distress in another by taking action or helping another in a prosocial manner, such as by delivering a treat. (An earlier post here discussed this issue with dolphins.) Further, those researchers have investigated whether such actions bridge species boundaries and explored when such actions are empathetic or altruistic rather than merely motivated by a desire for social contact.
Several studies have indicated that dogs will help humans in some circumstances, especially when humans exhibit directive behaviors such as pointing. However, in situations in which humans ask for help in a less direct way, dogs have not unfailingly come to our rescue. For example, Macpherson and Roberts found that when a person simulated the common symptoms of a heart attack, dogs did not run for help from an unconcerned bystander located in the same room. In short, the dogs appeared unconcerned about the human appearing to experience an emergency.
Perhaps, though, this lack of help-seeking behavior is more similar to humans’ behavior in similar emergency situations than it appears at first glance. Most of us assume that we would rush to the aid of another when imagining ourselves faced with a situation in which someone is in crisis. However, Latané and Darley’s now famous investigation of bystander intervention in emergencies shows us that humans are similarly unlikely to help because we use the emotional cues displayed by others to evaluate whether an emergency actually exists. When others appear unconcerned, we similarly assume there is nothing amiss.
To investigate this issue further, Sanford and colleagues in another article in the special issue, explored whether our best friends would help when a human was trapped behind a door either by displaying distress by crying or not displaying distress by humming. While dogs responded more quickly when the human cried, rates of opening the door did not vary across the crying and the humming conditions. Thus, faced alone with a distressed human in another room, dogs provided prosocial help quickly. Such helping behavior was interestingly not limited to therapy dogs—in fact, therapy dogs did not perform differently than dogs bearing no such certification or special training. This begs the question of whether service dogs, which are trained to be exceptionally attentive to their human companions, would help at higher rates? This remains to be explored.
Of course, data regarding one experimental question always spawn more interesting questions for future study. For example, how far would a dog actually go to help a human? Sanford and colleagues incorporated a relatively easy door-opening response in their investigation. Would helping behavior drop off as the prosocial task became more difficult? Additionally, is it just humans and dogs that dogs are willing to help? Would dogs act in a prosocial manner towards other species as well? Would a dog help a cat, for instance? Does a human’s history with the dog matter? Would a dog be more likely to help a human that had helped him/her in the past over one that had been mean? Could a human’s “reputation”, gained through direct or indirect experience with the dog, affect the dog’s willingness to help that human? Are dogs more willing to help humans in situations in which the human cannot perform the response in question alone?
Clearly, many interesting questions remain regarding dogs’ empathy and prosocial helping behavior as well as their cognition more generally. Such questions will likely continue to captivate the interests of scientists and the public alike for years to come.