ArticlePloS one2020
Pet dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) release their trapped and distressed owners: Individual variation and evidence of emotional contagion.
Article in PloS one, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed, 35 citations in OpenAlex.
- Reward expectation drives dogs' choices in a prosocial test.Animal cognition · 2026Article
- Exploring Cat-Human Interaction as a Psychosocial Resource in Autism and ADHD: Risks, Engagement, and Well-Being.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Communication as a Tool for Exhibiting Prosocial Behavior in Dogs.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Article
- Dogs distinguish authentic human emotions without being empathic.Animal cognition · 2024Article
- Beware of Strangers: Dogs' Empathetic Response to Unknown Humans.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Article
- Do pet dogs reciprocate the receipt of food from familiar and unfamiliar conspecifics?Ethology : formerly Zeitschrift fur Tierpsychologie · 2024Article
- Understanding Others' Distress Through Past Experiences: The Role of Memory Engram Cells in Observational Fear.Advances in neurobiology · 2024Review
- Dogs take into account the actions of a human partner in a cooperative task.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Caring animals and the ways we wrong them.Biology & philosophy · 2023Article
- Emotional contagion in nonhuman animals: A review.Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Cognitive science · 2022Review
- Caring animals and care ethics.Biology & philosophy · 2022Article
- Current Advances in Assessment of Dog's Emotions, Facial Expressions, and Their Use for Clinical Recognition of Pain.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2021Review
- Effects of oxytocin administration and the dog-owner bond on dogs' rescue behavior.Animal cognition · 2021Article
- The lack of validity hinders research in animal cognition.Learning & behavior · 2021Article
- Article
- The Indispensable Dog.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Review
- Working Dog Training for the Twenty-First Century.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2021Review
- Can a dog be spontaneous?Learning & behavior · 2020Article
- Would the Dog Be a Person's Child or Best Friend? Revisiting the Dog-Tutor Attachment.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Article
- How Dogs Perceive Humans and How Humans Should Treat Their Pet Dogs: Linking Cognition With Ethics.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Domestic dogs have assisted humans for millennia. However, the extent to which these helpful behaviors are prosocially motivated remains unclear. To assess the propensity of pet dogs to actively rescue distressed humans without explicit training, this study tested whether sixty pet dogs would release their seemingly trapped owners from a large box. To examine the causal mechanisms that shaped this behavior, the readiness of each dog to open the box was tested in three conditions: 1) the owner sat in the box and called for help (distress test), 2) an experimenter placed high-value food rewards in the box (food test), and 3) the owner sat in the box and calmly read aloud (reading test). Dogs were as likely to release their distressed owner as to retrieve treats from inside the box, indicating that rescuing an owner may be a highly rewarding action for dogs. After accounting for opening ability, dogs released the owner more often when the owner called for help than when the owner read aloud calmly. In addition, opening latencies decreased with test number in the distress test but not the reading test. Thus, rescuing the owner could not be attributed solely to social facilitation, stimulus enhancement, or social contact-seeking behavior. Dogs displayed more stress behaviors in the distress test than in the reading test, and stress scores decreased with test number in the reading test but not in the distress test. This evidence of emotional contagion supports the hypothesis that rescuing the distressed owner was an empathetically-motivated prosocial behavior. Success in the food task and previous (in-home) experience opening objects were both strong predictors of releasing the owner. Thus, prosocial behavior tests for dogs should control for physical ability and previous experience.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.