Research Hit: The Smell of Stress Makes Dogs more "Pessimistic"
New research shows that the smell of human stress leads dogs to become more "pessimistic"
Are you serious - dogs become more pessimistic, kind of depressed, with the smell of stress from humans!?
Yes, I couldn’t help but report on this when I saw this research!
But this concept of social contagion is not so unusual.
What is social contagion?
As it says, it is when we are infected by social emotions - happiness can spread as can sadness, and stressed individuals subsequently can lead to others being “infected” such as in this study which showed that it made others anxious.
But not only that I reported here on mental disorders also spreading amongst adolescents:
Fascinating - so social contagion happens in many ways between human beings - surround yourself with happy people then!
Yes indeed, if you can.
But this also affects dogs you say?
Well according to this research out of the University of Bristol in the UK, yes.
How did they do this research?
With dogs of course.
Ok, sarcasm aside, Parr-Cortes et al. recruited 18 dog-owner partnerships to take part in this study. The owners were put through different tasks that simulate relaxation, neutral states, or put them into mild stress.
Before this dogs were trained on two bowls one containing food in one location and one containing no food in another location (a few meters apart). This gave them a positive stimuli vs. a negative or disappointing stimuli. They then positioned a covered bowl in between these two locations - if a dog approaches this with speed it can be considered an optimistic state: the dog expecting food hence the speed.
However, if the dog slows down approaching this i.e. approaching it in the same way as the empty bowl, then this was considered a pessimistic state.
If I’ve understood correctly then, the dogs were exposed to their owners in different states and then shown this middle bowl, and the speed measured to predict an optimistic or pessimistic state?
Correct - and the results showed that they slowed down after their owners had been stressed showing a more pessimistic outlook.
So social contagion happens between dogs and humans!
Yes, which is fascinating. But a reminder that this also happens between human beings - we are socially contagious.
But if your dog is depressed it could be because you are stressed.
Indeed it could be a factor. So managing your state may be important for your dog - but also for your fellow human beings.
Reference
Z. Parr-Cortes, C. T. Müller, L. Talas, M. Mendl, C. Guest, N. J. Rooney.
The odour of an unfamiliar stressed or relaxed person affects dogs’ responses to a cognitive bias test.
Scientific Reports, 2024; 14 (1)
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-66147-1