For much of history, social emotions like jealousy and guilt were considered uniquely human. However, domesticated dogs display behaviors that strongly resemble these states. Mobbs (2018) reviews how the selective breeding of dogs for companionship, loyalty, and cooperation has contributed to the development of social emotions in canines, providing a mirror for studying human emotions.
The review emphasizes how neuroscientific tools, such as fMRI, have revealed overlaps in the neural circuits of dogs and humans. Canine jealousy, for instance, activates brain structures similar to those involved in human jealousy, supporting the argument that emotions are not uniquely human but may extend across species through conserved neural mechanisms.
Mobbs also highlights the role of facial muscle adaptations in dogs, which enable them to display expressions resembling human emotional cues. These changes, absent in wolves, illustrate how humans have socially engineered dogs to better communicate through emotion, shaping their evolutionary trajectory.
While some theories argue that dogs’ emotions may be automatic responses, the evidence supports the idea that dogs possess at least partial analogues to human social feelings. This not only advances the field of affective neuroscience but also raises fundamental questions about the evolutionary and cultural engineering of emotions in humans themselves.
The study underscores the instrumental role of dogs as models for understanding human emotional function and adaptation, while also acknowledging that we cannot yet determine whether dogs experience these emotions consciously as humans do.
Source: Mobbs, D. (2018). What can the social emotions of dogs teach us about human emotions. Pages 3–5.
