Emotional contagion, defined as the automatic matching of emotional states between individuals, is considered a fundamental building block of empathy. While prior work had shown that dogs respond emotionally to negative human sounds, Huber et al. (2017) expanded this by testing both human and dog sounds across positive and negative valences.
The researchers presented dogs with different types of sounds—emotional vocalizations from humans and conspecifics, and non-emotional environmental sounds. They analyzed the dogs’ behavioral responses across three dimensions: emotionality, species, and valence. Dogs responded differently to emotional versus neutral sounds, indicating sensitivity to emotional content. Interestingly, responses were similar for human and dog sounds, but dogs displayed more freezing behavior after conspecific vocalizations.
The strongest effects emerged with negative emotional sounds. Regardless of whether the sound came from a human or a dog, subjects showed increased arousal and more indicators of distress. This suggests that dogs not only recognize the valence of emotional cues but also mirror the negative states of others, a phenomenon consistent with emotional contagion.
These findings highlight that dogs are sensitive to the emotions of both humans and conspecifics, and that their responses go beyond simple conditioning. Recognizing the distinction between positive and negative emotions opens the door for future research on whether dogs can also mirror positive emotional states, offering deeper insights into the roots of empathy in domesticated animals.
Source: Huber, A., Barber, A., Faragó, T., Müller, C. A., & Huber, L. (2017). Investigating emotional contagion in dogs (Canis familiaris) to emotional sounds of humans and conspecifics. Animal Cognition, 20, 703–715. Published April 21, 2017.
