Do Dogs Understand Why We Cry?
So, do dogs understand why we cry? No, dogs don’t understand why we cry and can’t fully understand the emotion itself. However, they feel distressed whenever we look upset or crying and they can detect that something is off. Dogs will respond to that emotion and try to change it to a better one by cheering us up.
It’s nothing new knowing that dogs are intelligent and intuitive creatures that can sense and respond to what we want them to, even if it’s a human emotion that they don’t experience the same way. That means your loyal best friend will respond to whatever you’re feeling even if they don’t get it.
According to an article in Psychology Today titled “Your Dog Really Does Care If You Are Unhappy”, adult dogs have a mind similar to that of a human toddler, with about the same mental abilities, vocabulary, and emotional intelligence.
So maybe your baby won’t fully comprehend the emotion they observe but they can still react to it. That means dogs are also capable of doing the same thing.
So dogs may not fully understand the reason behind your tears, but they’ll show an amount of empathy no matter what.
Whenever a dog sees a sign of distress or upset emotions, not only will they approach you to be next to you, but they’ll also try to distract you from this emotion and they’ll do their best to cheer you up without knowing the reason behind all this.
Most experts believe that the only explanation for this is that dogs indeed experience emotional contagion.
It’s when they respond to your emotion and match it with a similar one without fully comprehending the emotion. This also explains how they become more cheerful when you’re feeling the same way.
Of the 18 dogs in the study, 15 approached their owner or Mayer during crying fits, while only six approached during humming. That suggests that its emotional content, not curiosity, that brings the dogs running. Likewise, the dogs always approached the crying person, never the quiet person, as one might expect if the dog was seeking (rather than trying to provide) comfort.
But seeking out assistance is a complex task, and Custance and her colleague Jennifer Mayer wanted to keep it simple. They recruited 18 pet dogs and their owners to test whether dogs would respond to crying with empathetic behaviors. The dogs included a mix of mutts, Labrador retrievers, golden retrievers and a few other common breeds. [What Your Dogs Breed Says About You]
Stephanie Pappas is a contributing writer for Live Science, covering topics ranging from geoscience to archaeology to the human brain and behavior. She was previously a senior writer for Live Science but is now a freelancer based in Denver, Colorado, and regularly contributes to Scientific American and The Monitor, the monthly magazine of the American Psychological Association. Stephanie received a bachelors degree in psychology from the University of South Carolina and a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
“We in no way claim that the present study provides definitive answers to the question of empathy in dogs,” Mayer and Custance wrote. Nevertheless, they said, their experiment opens the door for more study of dogs emotional lives, from whether different breeds respond to emotional owners differently to whether dogs understand the difference between laughter and tears.
“The dogs approached whoever was crying regardless of their identity. Thus they were responding to the persons emotion, not their own needs, which is suggestive of empathic-like comfort-offering behavior,” Mayer said in a statement.