Let’s get it together: the relationship between different measures of empathy in dogs

Abstract

The lives of humans and dogs are greatly intertwined, making it crucial to understand how human emotions impact companion animals. While previous work found dogs respond greatly to humans and emotions through different metrics, including heart rate variability (HRV), person-oriented behaviors, a cognitive bias task (CBT), and owner-reported empathy surveys, little work has compared these measures of emotional responsiveness. We examined relationships between the aforementioned measures while dogs were presented with human emotions by their owner and a stranger. We hypothesized that these metrics would highly correlate if all measured empathy-related responses. We found the most person-oriented behaviors for expressions of negative emotions (i.e., crying), followed by positive ones (i.e., laughing), and similar physiological responses to previous research. Survey results suggested that dogs with higher empathy scores showed more person-oriented behaviors while their owner cried and had marginally greater attachment scores. However, dogs did not show any evidence of pessimism based on the emotional state they were exposed to in the CBT. Lastly, dogs who displayed more person-oriented behaviors showed greater physiological stress (i.e., low HRV) when the stranger cried or owner laughed. Our findings suggest that dogs respond to human emotions, which is reflected through physiological measures, and owners can predict their dog’s emotional responsiveness. Additionally, dogs with greater attachment are viewed as more empathetic by their owners, and orient to and interact with humans when they show distress. However, dogs may not feel that emotional state, or the CBT may not be an effective method of evaluating those short-term states.