Your dog isn't as happy as he seems: scientists discover why we're wrong about dogs' emotions

A new study by scientists at Arizona State University shows that people are actually bad at reading their pets' emotions.

Details: Barking up the wrong tree: Human perceptions of dog emotions are influenced by extraneous factors,, Anthrozoös (2025). tandfonline.com/doi/full

The reason for these errors is that people judge a dog's mood not by its actual behaviour, but by the context of the situation, and project their own emotions onto the animal. The result is the anthropomorphism effect, where we mistakenly attribute human feelings to pets.

Researchers Holly Molinaro and Clive Winn conducted two experiments, the results of which are published in the journal Anthrozoös. They recorded videos of the same dog in different situations: "pleasant" (the dog was offered a treat or a leash for a walk) and "unpleasant" (the dog was lightly scolded or shown a hoover, which he was afraid of).

In the first experiment, participants were shown the original videos with the full context of the situation and separately shown only the dog without its surroundings. In the second, the videos were specially edited to swap pleasant and unpleasant situations.

The results showed that people always based their assessment of the dog's emotions on the dog's surroundings rather than its actual behaviour. If a dog saw a treat, observers always assumed it was happy, although its behaviour could be identical to the hoover situation, where everyone assumed the dog was afraid.

"People don't assess the actual state of the dog," says Molinaro, "instead they draw conclusions based solely on the situation. We look at everything around the dog, but not the dog itself."

The scientists stress that owners need to be aware of their mistakes and learn to pay attention to their pet's behaviour rather than their environment or their own expectations. Only then can you truly understand your four-legged friend and build a genuine bond with him.