Nearly 150 years ago, Charles Darwin sent photographs of
actors expressing various emotions to missionaries far and wide. He wanted to
know whether the natives correctly identified the emotions expressed in
European faces.
Now, 150 years later, Italian veterinary scientists working
on animal behaviour and bioethics asked the same question, with a variation: do
dogs recognise anger, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise, and disgust as well
emotionally neutral faces when they see photographs?
By Rcramer1413 via Wikimedia Commons
Seems they do. And what’s more, they turn their head towards
right (for left hemisphere processing) when they see surprise expressed in a
photograph – whereas they turn to their right (for right hemisphere processing)
when the photograph expresses other emotions.
Why?
I am not sure about the reasons they give. It appears that
it could be a misinterpretation by dogs. Smiling without vocalisation that
signal happiness is often mistaken by dogs as snarling too, they say. Do you
think they are right? Take a look at the paper published online in Learning & Behavior -Orienting
asymmetries and physiological reactivity in dogs’ response to human emotional
faces
Anyway, do you respond to the pictures above left, and here right, differently? (It is the same picture, but flipped horizontally).
Which one do you emotionally respond to, as a dog lover? The picture on the left or the one on the right?
Anyway, do you respond to the pictures above left, and here right, differently? (It is the same picture, but flipped horizontally).
Which one do you emotionally respond to, as a dog lover? The picture on the left or the one on the right?
Learning & Behavior https://doi.org/10.3758/s13420-018-0325-2
