Identifying facial expressions in dogs: A replication and extension study.

Area of Science:

• Animal behavior
• Canine ethology
• Human-animal interaction

Background:

• Previous research (Bloom & Friedman, 2013) established human ability to identify dog emotions in Malinois.
• The influence of breed-specific facial morphology on emotion recognition accuracy remained largely unexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

• To replicate and extend prior findings on canine emotion recognition.
• To investigate the impact of dog breed facial morphology on the accuracy of human identification of six discrete emotions.
• To compare emotion recognition accuracy across Malinois, Doberman, and Rhodesian Ridgeback breeds.

Main Methods:

• 105 undergraduate students participated in the study.
• Participants viewed images of Malinois, Doberman, and Rhodesian Ridgeback breeds expressing happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise.
• Participants identified the emotion depicted in each image.

Main Results:

• Humans could identify all six emotions across all tested dog breeds significantly above chance.
• The Malinois breed yielded the highest accuracy in emotion identification.
• The Doberman breed showed higher accuracy than the Rhodesian Ridgeback, contrary to initial predictions regarding coloration.

Conclusions:

• Human ability to recognize canine emotions is not limited to a single breed and extends to breeds with varying facial morphologies.
• Facial morphology significantly influences the accuracy of emotion recognition in dogs.
• The Malinois breed appears to possess more discernible emotional expressions compared to the Doberman and Rhodesian Ridgeback.