Stress
Do Dogs Have Empathy for Human Stress and Discomfort?
Both dogs and people produce stress hormones when they hear a baby cry.
Posted May 6, 2015
I had just left the eye clinic after a doctor's appointment when I noticed a woman sitting on a bench near the door. I guessed that she was waiting for someone who was also receiving medical treatment inside. There was a baby carriage to one side of her and on the other sat a preschool-aged little girl, perhaps four years of age. The little girl was tightly clutching a leash which was attached to a mixed breed dog which looked something like a Border Collie. The dog was standing and watching the people passing by when suddenly a squall of distressed crying rose from the baby carriage. The mother pulled the carriage closer to her in order to check on what was upsetting the infant, however the reaction of the dog was interesting. After conscientious look in the direction of the crying sound the dog's ears and tail went down, his body cringed in a sort of submissive way and he pushed himself closer to the seated woman's knee. The little girl observed the dog and announced, "Elmer gets sad whenever he hears Judy cry." The mother nodded and responded, "Yes, Judy's crying bothers him in the same way that it bothers me and you."
It is certainly the case that hearing a baby cry can be quite distressing to humans. We respond to the sound with increased attention, namely we get up and check on the crying child. Our body also responds to this sound in another way — specifically by releasing the stress hormone cortisol. This emotionally based stress response happens regardless of our age, parenting experience, or gender. Both the mother and daughter that I observed seemed to assume that dogs are wired to react in the same way that people do when they hear a baby cry, but is this true? A recent study published in the journal Behavioural Processes* suggests that this might in fact that is be the case.
Ted Ruffman and Min Hooi Yong of the Psychology Department at the University of Otago in New Zealand exposed 74 people and 75 pet dogs (of many different breeds) to one of three different conditions in order to check the response of humans and canines to sounds produced by babies. The first group heard the usually distressing sound of a baby crying, the second heard an infant babbling, while the third heard a sample of computer-generated white noise (a variation of radio static which is considered to be unpleasant by most people although it usually does not provoke an emotional response).
After listening to the sounds for 13 minutes, saliva was taken from both human listeners and dogs in order to test for cortisol levels. The researchers felt that the presence of cortisol might be an indication of empathy for the unhappy child.
There were no particular changes in response to hearing the infant babbling. However, the white noise produced a stress response in both humans and dogs. The humans indicated this by rating this sound is very unpleasant and the dogs by lowering their heads, allowing their ears to go back and flat, lowering their tails, allowing their tongue to protrude slightly — all of which are signs of either stress or submissiveness. However, there was no change in the cortisol levels of either the people or the canines to this unpleasant noise.
The situation was different when dogs and people listened to the sound of a baby crying. The dogs showed alertness and then signs of stress or submissiveness, and in addition there was a sharp increase in the concentration of the stress hormone cortisol in their bodies. The cortisol level also rose in a similar way in the humans who heard those same sounds. In other words, both people and dogs seemed to pick up the emotional distress of the crying baby and reflected it in their own behavior and emotional responses. In the video clip below you can see that the dog becomes upset when listening to the sound of the baby's cries showing submissive body signals and then seeking comfort from her owner.
In an interview Professor Ruffman noted that, "It looks very much like empathy." However he explained that the observed response does not necessarily mean the dogs were aware that the crying baby was in distress. He suggests that, "It is a very low-level form of emotional contagion." When he refers to emotional contagion he is using the scientific term which describes the way that people's moods can spread to other people around them. You have probably encountered this many times, such as the time when you were feeling okay until some friend of yours came along, told you about all of his troubles, and afterward you ended up feeling as awful as he did. You had, effectively, been infected by his negative emotions. The flip side of this coin is that when you hang out with happy people, you tend to feel happier, have more energy, and feel less stressed.
Whether what we are seeing in dogs in this case is true empathy or not, it is another example of the fact that dogs do pay attention to human feelings. Furthermore these new data tend to confirm other observations that the emotional responses of dogs tends to reflect the moods that they observe in the people around them. For more about empathy in dogs click here.
Stanley Coren is the author of many books including: The Wisdom of Dogs; Do Dogs Dream? Born to Bark; The Modern Dog; Why Do Dogs Have Wet Noses? The Pawprints of History; How Dogs Think; How To Speak Dog; Why We Love the Dogs We Do; What Do Dogs Know? The Intelligence of Dogs; Why Does My Dog Act That Way? Understanding Dogs for Dummies; Sleep Thieves; The Left-hander Syndrome
Copyright SC Psychological Enterprises Ltd. May not be reprinted or reposted without permission
* Data from: Min Hooi Yong and Ted Ruffman (2014). Emotional contagion: Dogs and humans show a similar physiological response to human infant crying. Behavioural Processes, 108, 155 – 165.