Emotional contagion measured (in dogs and pigs)

Reading: Dogs might have evolved to read your emotions, Nature news, 19 July 2024.

Of interest to me to learn how on earth you measure “emotional contagion”. Contagion is when human distress is mirrored in dog stress, for example.

It’s collected like this:

The team recruited dog or pig owners around the world and had them film themselves in a room with their pets while playing recorded sounds of crying or humming. Researchers then tallied the number of stress behaviours — such as whining and yawning for dogs, and rapid ear flicks for pigs — exhibited during the experiment.

The conclusion in the paper is: “Dogs showed more stress reactions to a high-arousal, negatively valenced human sound.”

In other words, dogs are very good boys and girls. And some pigs would prefer it if you don’t hum around them.