Dogs Notice When People (or Other Dogs) Sound Sad

Your dog may act like a good listener—but does she really notice when you're feeling down? Or does she just know how to deploy a wet nose and a tail-wag to earn treats? A new study says negative emotions are contagious for dogs. They'll pick up a companion's bad feelings just by sound, whether that companion is human or canine. "Emotional contagion" is the most basic form of empathy, write Annika Huber of the University of Vienna's Clever Dog Lab and her colleagues. We're not talking Counselor-Troi-level empathy, strong enough to reach between starships. Emotional contagion is just the automatic, unconscious matching of two animals' emotional states. Earlier studies have found evidence of this feeling-sharing in primates, rodents and birds. Studies of pet dogs have found signs of empathy, too: When people pretended to cry, dogs offered comfort. Dogs also responded negatively to the sound of babies crying. (But when ...