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© 2011 Michele Wan, Columbia University, Department of Psychology, 1190 Amsterdam Ave., MC5501, New York, NY 10027
Study on Human Perception of Emotion in Dogs
If you have questions, please contact Michele Wan, PhD, at (203) 293-6462 or mwan@psych.columbia.edu.
This website presents results from a large study on the role of dog experience in human
interpretations of dog behavior. Over 2,000 participants watched short video clips of dogs
and provided their interpretations of the dogs' emotions. The results indicated that people's
experience with dogs is strongly associated with their perceptions of emotion in dogs.
Example (playback requires Javascript-enabled browser):
Example (playback requires Javascript-enabled browser):
Do you speak dog?
Compared to dog professionals, individuals who had never lived with a dog were more likely
to categorize the dog above as feeling happy and less likely to categorize him as feeling
neutral or fearful. For more examples and a summary of study results, click here.