Dogs Feel The Full Spectrum Of Human Emotions?

[Blackdogs]

The below list of human emotions is taken from Wikipedia. Which (if any) of these emotions do you believe dogs experience?

Negative and forceful Anger

Annoyance

Contempt

Disgust

Irritation

Negative and not in control Anxiety

Embarrassment

Fear

Helplessness

Powerlessness

Worry

Negative thoughts Doubt

Envy

Frustration

Guilt

Shame

Negative and passive Boredom

Despair

Disappointment

Hurt

Sadness

Agitation Stress

Shock

Tension

Positive and lively Amusement

Delight

Elation

Excitement

Happiness

Joy

Pleasure

Caring Affection

Empathy

Friendliness

Love

Positive thoughts Courage

Hope

Pride

Satisfaction

Trust

Quiet positive Calm

Content

Relaxed

Relieved

Serene

Reactive Interest

Politeness

Surprised

If you have time to explain your answer I would be appreciative.

Warning: I may play devil's advocate.

[Are You Serious Jo]

I used to answer these types of questions but haven't for a a while. I don't have the energy to really go into it but the general gist is no. To be able to feel emotions that require you to feel a particular something about what someone thinks you have to understand that they can think (theory of mind). To have theory of mind you need to have secondary representation, that is to be able to imagine something in your mind while looking at something else entirely. You also need self awareness. So far the only animals to show self awareness are great apes (including us) and possibly dolphins. Some work has been done on elephants but there are methodological flaws so it needs replicating.

I know this because I spent a lot of time researching it when I was was doing research projects in this area on dogs. I stopped answering these threads because people would argue black and blue that scientists were wrong because of one anecdote about their dog that could easily be explained by cuing :laugh: I am rusty on latest dog cognitive research though, but believe me, if we found reliable evidence of the foundations needed for the above emotions it would be a nature paper and we'd all know it.

[minimax]

Yeh, this debate tends to get boring. While you're on wikipedia, look up anthropomorphism.

[Dame Aussie]

From what I've read dogs only experience emotions like happiness, fear, anxiety and the like, very basic. Anything that goes beyond this such as guilt, worry etc no, they don't think that way.

[Odin-Genie]

What about trust? Can dogs experience trust? If not why do they trust a family memeber to say, remove a bone stuck in their mouth, but wouldn't easily let a stranger do that?

[minimax]

What about trust? Can dogs experience trust? If not why do they trust a family memeber to say, remove a bone stuck in their mouth, but wouldn't easily let a stranger do that?

I doubt that's trust, and more to do with not being comfortable with the stranger.

[Tempus Fugit]

So what about people who make these claims (taken from this site:

There are several functions we include with every dog we place which are unique outside our school of training:

• As a National and World Champion we enhance the natural sensory abilities of each dog we train from 3 to 10 times.
  
• We teach each dog to use a comprehensive thought process, using their left brain abilities.
  
• Each dog we produce comes trained to give 95 percent focus to their handler, no matter what.
  
• The dogs are then capable of feeling the electromagnetic's specific for their handler which means they can feel the dynamics of their brain and body as they work. We use this to teach them how to receive electromagnetic fields of communication with their handler.
  

Combining their ability to feel and smell your brain and body as they work, the dog receives brainwave activity and corresponding body responses to understand and respond to them. They become brainwave sensitive, can detect seizure activity up to 8 hours before the body goes into seizure. They become sensitive to abnormal neurological activity, and alert the handler and family to this behavior.

Are they over the top? Or is this different to feeling emotion?

[Are You Serious Jo]

If by brainwave activity they mean some very subtle cues by the owner then it can happen. But it really is only cuing. They really need to rewrite their spiel because either they are talking about cues and doing it badly or they are trying to claim some metaphysical bull. The left brain ability thing is a bit left field. I'd avoid them because of the atrocious way they present themselves :laugh:

[corvus]

I'm not rusty on dog cognition research. :laugh: I'm in my third year of a PhD on dog cognition and affective state. I'm not real interested in the "which emotions" business, though. I don't think it's an especially pivotal question, and studies that have tried to find higher order emotions if that's what you want to call them in dogs have AFAIK found no evidence. It can be a tricky thing to investigate, though. It's difficult to prove when there are usually alternative explanations of behaviour based on better understood processes, like learning theory. I think if you're interested in this kind of thing you should take a look at Marc Bekoff's blog on Psychology Today. He is a pretty touchy feely scientist, but he collects anecdotes about animal emotions and has written books on it. I heard him speak at a conference recently and really enjoyed it. He's much more considered in front of a scientific audience!

[Jed]

This is an extract from Dr Becker's website in the USA.

If your canine companion seems to sense your every mood, it’s probably more than your imagination or wishful thinking.

According to a paper recently published in Biology Letters, dogs have the capacity to empathize with us to such an extent that therapy dogs appear to exhibit similar emotions to their sick or upset human companions.

And it’s not that dogs simply copy human responses, according to study authors Karine Silva and Liliana Sousa:

"Indeed, a study showing that pets, namely dogs, behave as 'upset' as children when exposed to familiar people faking distress, strongly suggests 'sympathetic concern.”

"Also it has been reported that untrained dogs may be sensitive to human emergencies and may act appropriately to summon help, which, if true, suggests empathic perspective taking."

Interestingly, in experiments where dog owners only pretended to have an accident or a heart attack, the dogs seemed confused and didn’t really react. This leads scientists to theorize dogs need to also smell and hear certain aspects of actual stress before they have an instinctive response.

Another experiment concluded that therapy dogs are affected on both an emotional and physical level by their jobs, and benefit from massages and other calming measures after a work session.

The study authors think there are three primary reasons why dogs have the ability to empathize with humans:

1.Like wolves, dogs are highly social animals that engage in cooperative activities and are believed to have some ability to empathize with their fellow wolves.

2.Biological changes produced during the domestication of dogs may have allowed them to synchronize their wolf-inherited empathic capacities with those of humans.

3.Breed diversification and selection for canine intelligence may have increased the dog ability to empathize.

[corvus]

Oh really? Holy crap, apart from the fact that as far as I can make out, this is a fairly big misrepresentation of study findings, the three points at the bottom have massive holes you can drive a truck through. Looks like pseudo-science to me. The stuff the OP posted before was not even pseudo-science, but outright quackery IMO. Dunno who Dr Becker is, but if they reference the studies mentioned I would check them out and see if they really do say what Dr Becker says they say. I check all my references. Even scientists are prone to attributing some odd things to other scientists for whatever reasons.

[Aphra]

Cambridge Declaration on consciousness

http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf

[Jed]

I don't believe there is any point arguing about anything in this spectrum, so I don't bother engaging in these threads. Science has no way of qualifying anything much attributed to animals and in particular, dogs, and if there is no way of proving it, why bother?

I believe there were references given for that article, but I didn't bother copying and posting them. No one is forcing anyone to believe anything, read it, and make what you will of it.

[Weasels]

As my trainer said last week - "dogs aren't capable of love. I mean, *my* dogs are of course, but none of *your* dogs really feel love" :p

[Are You Serious Jo]

There are ways to test cognitive abilities Jed, comparative psychology is one of the most exciting areas because it really can give us answers to animals abilities. It's about problem solving, you can reliably test if you are careful about how you set up the experiments. We use human infants as benchmarks and then design experiments that take into account the differences between the infants and the subject and see how they perform.

The thing to remember is not to get disappointed if you learn that dogs don't have all those special feelings, but to enjoy them for the amazing ability to co-exist with us by their ability to learn and use cues, so much that they appear to feel emotions they don't have.

[Jed]

Rev Jo, I am aware there are tests. Howevever, there are not enough, and they are not detailed enough, at this time.

40 - 50years ago, if I said that animals felt pain, everyone would have laughed. Beasts (cattle sheep goats) were (and are) marked, dehorned, castrated, mulesed, and branded without any aneasthetic because it was generally believed they did not feel pain as humans do. Some people who run properties still believe they feel no pain.

It was never usual to give pets any pain relief following operations - because vets believed they didn't need it - because they didn't really feel pain as people did. And that was happening until 15 - 20 years ago. If you asked for pain relief, I am sure vets thought you were a doper who was after some dog dope to give you a high!!

Scientific studies proved animals felt pain, and our ways of handling them changed, as they should have.

People who were even marginally empathic already knew they felt pain. But a study was needed to prove it.

History often shows us the way forward.

The woman who wrote Black Beauty did so to try to highlight and prevent the endemic cruelty to working horses at that time.

I have had a lot of animals over my life and when I have anecdotal evidence that "X" is so, I go with that. I don't want to convince someone else, because I can't prove it.

In time, there will be scientific studies to prove most of these things but they don't exist now.

When people believed the world was flat, they were happy with that --- when CC proved it was round, I am sure there were people who did not believe that - because it was anecdotal evidence.

Science doesn't always have all the answers. Mostly, but some answers are in the future

Edited September 27, 2012 by Jed

[Are You Serious Jo]

In time, there will be scientific studies to prove most of these things but they don't exist now.

Just have to answer this bit, they do exist right now. You won't see the studies in mainstream media because it's chipping away and only the big stuff gets reported, but there is a huge amount of work being done that the public has no clue about. So we do have ways to answer a lot of these questions at the moment and it is being done.