Does Your Dog Really Care?

       Photo:  Lunja/Shutterstock.com

        As humans we have the tendency to anthropomorphize the animals around us which we take care of. The biggest one that we expect to have similar feelings or at least understand our feelings would be dogs. We want to believe that they have empathy towards us and care about what we're feeling since we care about them so much as well. 

In a UK study, two researchers looked to answer the question of if dogs show empathy towards their owners (or any person). In their experiment, they tested how dogs would react to their owner and a stranger showing some type of emotion in some sense, either humming or crying. Surprisingly even when the stranger showed distress, the dogs would seek them out. Deborah Custance, one of researchers, stated, "On the surface, it certainly seemed as if the dogs were demonstrating empathy" (Garrett, 2017). Empathy is a hard thing to identify though when you cannot ask the individual in question on their motives or their own emotions. This just pulls more things into question about what is considered an emotion and what other emotions dogs may respond to. 

Also when dog empathy is looked at, it is more focused on the empathy shown towards people and not how they interact with one another. In another experiment, dog housemates' "empathy" for one another was looked at. With 16 pairs, one of the dogs would be brought into a isolated room and their wining/barking would be recorded. After that, the other dog would be brought into the same room and hear the recording of the other dog. They responded in what we would call correct behavior by  whining themselves, tail between the legs, and/or lowering their body. They were then reunited with their other housemate and would show affection towards the dog. Cortisol was also looked at during the study and was recorded to look at the dog's stress which spiked when they heard the other dog's distress sounds (Becker, n.d.). The dogs in the study showed that there may be an ability of empathy in dogs if we define it in a way that fits the dogs.

Photo: Dogtime

Both of these studies seem to lean towards the idea that dogs do care and show empathy towards people as well with another. As stated before, it does bring up the question of what qualifies as empathy or what other emotions can they understand. The reason behind dogs' particular abilities may be due to the fact that they've been raised around humans and to care. 

References

Garrett, L. (2017, June 30). Inside your dog's mind: What they feel for you. Retrieved November 26,

2017, from https://www.cesarsway.com/dog-psychology/instinctual/can-dogs-feel-empathy

Becker. (n.d.). Just How Affectionate Is Your Dog? Find Out From This Stunning New Study. Retrieved November 26, 2017, from https://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2017/09/08/do-dogs-feel-empathy-for-other-dogs.aspx#!