Humans believe they understand their dogs. Our research gave us pause. – The Washington Post

Dog owners don’t understand their pet’s emotions as well as they think they do.

May 26, 2025 at 7:00 a.m. EDT, Yesterday at 7:00 a.m. EDT

Clive D.L. Wynne is a professor of psychology and director of the Canine Science Collaboratory at Arizona State University. Holly Molinaro has recently completed her PhD at Arizona State.

Most of us have powerful intuitions about how our dog is feeling — starting with that flag attached to the rear end, the tail. Tail wagging: dog happy. Tail tucked: dog sad or scared. And yet the scientific literature is surprisingly quiet about whether we are actually good at reading a dog’s emotions. If people are going to care for dogs, they need to know how their pet is really feeling — so we studied just how well they understand dogs’ emotions.

Our work started during the pandemic with one of us, Clive, in Arizona and the other, Holly, in Connecticut. As we struggled to master Zoom, we realized that manipulating video could help us investigate this question.

Opinion | Humans believe they understand their dogs. Our research gave us pause. – Washington Post