Pet dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) release their trapped and distressed owners: Individual variation and evidence of emotional contagion

Abstract

Domestic dogs have assisted humans for millennia. However, the extent to which these helpful behaviors are prosocially motivated remains unclear. To assess the propensity of pet dogs to actively rescue distressed humans without explicit training, this study tested whether sixty pet dogs would release their seemingly trapped owners from a large box. To examine the causal mechanisms that shaped this behavior, the readiness of each dog to open the box was tested in three conditions: 1) the owner sat in the box and called for help (distress test), 2) an experimenter placed high-value food rewards in the box (food test), and 3) the owner sat in the box and calmly read aloud (reading test). Dogs were as likely to release their distressed owner as to retrieve treats from inside the box, indicating that rescuing an owner may be a highly rewarding action for dogs. After accounting for opening ability, dogs released the owner more often when the owner called for help than when the owner read aloud calmly. In addition, opening latencies decreased with test number in the distress test but not the reading test. Thus, rescuing the owner could not be attributed solely to social facilitation, stimulus enhancement, or social contact-seeking behavior. Dogs displayed more stress behaviors in the distress test than in the reading test, and stress scores decreased with test number in the reading test but not in the distress test. This evidence of emotional contagion supports the hypothesis that rescuing the distressed owner was an empathetically-motivated prosocial behavior. Success in the food task and previous (inhome) experience opening objects were both strong predictors of releasing the owner. Thus, prosocial behavior tests for dogs should control for physical ability and previous experience.

Human Expressions of Object Preference Affect Dogs’ Perceptual Focus, but Not Their Action Choices

“…Weaker inhibition as a possible explanation will need to be demonstrated more directly in the future. Interestingly, freeing the owner from a closed space is an active behavior more likely (than fetching) to align with the owner's expressed emotion (Carballo et al, 2020;Van Bourg et al, 2020). Our results suggest that in the above studies, the dogs' interest to remain close to the owner (Topál et al, 1998) and the owner's display of distress might enhance one another, since we also observed a stronger alignment between dogs' preference and looking orientation, if it was matching with the owner's expressions.…”

How Dogs Perceive Humans and How Humans Should Treat Their Pet Dogs: Linking Cognition With Ethics

“…The capacity for emotional contagion lies at its core, and outer layers of this "Russian doll" can incorporate more cognitively demanding capacities, such as theory of mind, perspective-taking, and sympathetic concern (e.g., de Waal, 2008). While the available evidence suggests that dogs are capable of emotional contagion (Sümegi et al, 2014;Yong and Ruffman, 2014;Palagi et al, 2015;Quervel-Chaumette et al, 2016;Huber et al, 2017;Bourg et al, 2020), researchers are still on the look-out for empathybased complex behavior. First results indicate, for example, that there is "empathetically-motivated prosocial helping in dogs" and that dogs "are most likely to provide help to a human in need if they are able to focus on the human's need instead of their own personal distress" (Sanford et al, 2018, 386).…”

“…According to Purves and Delon (2018), animals' lives acquire meaning when they are allowed to exercise their agency and use it to bring valuable states of affairs to the world. These valuable states of affairs range from relatively simple endeavors like rearing their young or establishing friendships, to more demanding behaviors like rescuing a human in need (which recent research shows dogs are capable of; Bourg et al, 2020). A dog who is allowed to flourish to her full capacity is more likely to lead a meaningful life, which will in turn be a better life.…”

Would the Dog Be a Person's Child or Best Friend? Revisiting the Dog-Tutor Attachment

“…Skills such as emotion recognition (Albuquerque et al, 2016) and empathy (Custance and Mayer, 2012) toward humans have already been recognized in dogs. This empathic ability motivates prosocial and helping behaviors, as demonstrated in studies in which dogs rescued their tutors from a distressful situation (Sanford et al, 2018;Carballo et al, 2020;Van Bourg et al, 2020). These evidences reinforce the plausibility of the hypothesis that dogs can also carry a type of caregiving system, but more studies are needed to better investigate the role of caregiver in dogs.…”