ArticleAnimal cognition2022
Dogs can infer implicit information from human emotional expressions.
Article in Animal cognition, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 18 citations in OpenAlex.
- Cows react to human emotions displayed in videos and use this information to guide subsequent interaction choices.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Professional perspectives on recurrent characteristics of dogs with separation-related problems: a qualitative study in three nordic countries.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Deference or sociability? Insights from dogs' and wolves' human-directed behavior in a food-conflict task.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Dogs display context-dependent behavioral responses to subtle owner-derived multimodal stimuli.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2026Article
- Hierarchy-Dependent Behaviour of Dogs in the Strange Situation Test: High-Ranking Dogs Show Less Stress and Behave Less Friendly with a Stranger in the Presence of Their Owner.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Human-dog trust and cohesion within French military canine teams.Military psychology : the official journal of the Division of Military Psychology, American Psychological Association · 2025Article
- Rank-Related Differences in Dogs' Behaviours in Frustrating Situations.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Article
- Dogs distinguish authentic human emotions without being empathic.Animal cognition · 2024Article
- How Do Dogs Behave When Presented with Situations of Different Emotional Valences?Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Article
- Dogs functionally respond to and use emotional information from human expressions.Evolutionary human sciences · 2023Review
- The shape of lipsmacking: socio-emotional regulation in bearded capuchin monkeys (Evolutionary human sciences · 2023Article
- Domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) grieve over the loss of a conspecific.Scientific reports · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
The ability to infer emotional states and their wider consequences requires the establishment of relationships between the emotional display and subsequent actions. These abilities, together with the use of emotional information from others in social decision making, are cognitively demanding and require inferential skills that extend beyond the immediate perception of the current behaviour of another individual. They may include predictions of the significance of the emotional states being expressed. These abilities were previously believed to be exclusive to primates. In this study, we presented adult domestic dogs with a social interaction between two unfamiliar people, which could be positive, negative or neutral. After passively witnessing the actors engaging silently with each other and with the environment, dogs were given the opportunity to approach a food resource that varied in accessibility. We found that the available emotional information was more relevant than the motivation of the actors (i.e. giving something or receiving something) in predicting the dogs' responses. Thus, dogs were able to access implicit information from the actors' emotional states and appropriately use the affective information to make context-dependent decisions. The findings demonstrate that a non-human animal can actively acquire information from emotional expressions, infer some form of emotional state and use this functionally to make decisions.
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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.