Study: Dogs Prefer Happy Human Faces — Thanks to Hormone Oxytocin

Oxytocin, a powerful hormone produced by all mammals, including canines, is a key factor in the interaction between dogs and humans, according to a new study led by University of Helsinki researchers.

Happy faces are attractive to dogs. Image credit: Sanni Somppi.

Happy faces are attractive to dogs. Image credit: Sanni Somppi.

“It seems that oxytocin influences what the dog sees and how it experiences the thing it sees,” said lead author Sanni Somppi, a doctoral student in the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Helsinki.

In the study, 43 domestic dogs were presented with pictures of unfamiliar male human faces displaying either a happy or an angry expression.

Each dog was tested twice: once under the influence of oxytocin, which was administered as part of the test, and once without oxytocin.

The dog’s gaze on the images and pupil size were measured with an eye-tracking device.

Emotions and attentiveness guide the gaze and regulate pupil size, making eye tracking a window into the dogs’ minds.

“Dogs typically focus on the most remarkable aspect of each situation, such as threatening stimuli in a frightening situation. Recognizing and interpreting threats quickly is important for survival,” Somppi and co-authors explained.

“Dogs under the influence of oxytocin were more interested in smiling faces than they were in angry ones.”

“In addition, oxytocin also influenced the dogs’ emotional states, which was evident in their pupil size.”

Without oxytocin, the dogs’ pupils were at their largest when they looked at angry faces. This indicated that the angry faces caused the most powerful emotional reaction in the dogs.

Under the influence of oxytocin, however, images of smiling faces enhanced the dogs’ emotional state more than angry ones.

This is to say that oxytocin probably made the angry faces seem less threatening and the smiling faces more appealing.

“Both effects promote dog-human communication and the development of affectionate relations,” said study senior author Professor Outi Vainio, also from the University of Helsinki.

“Further studies are needed to determine whether the results we report are typical only for domestic dogs due their human-tunedness in their communicative skills, or, whether a similar phenomenon exists in other mammalian species,” the scientists said.

“Moreover, in our study dogs were presented with unfamiliar human faces, thus, at present we do not know whether familiarity would modulate the observed effect of oxytocin on emotional face processing.”

“In future studies, the effects of the dogs’ breed, sex and personality traits should also be taken into account, as the impact of oxytocin are not uniform across all individuals.”

The study appears in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

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Sanni Somppi et al. Nasal Oxytocin Treatment Biases Dogs’ Visual Attention and Emotional Response toward Positive Human Facial Expressions. Front. Psychol, published online October 17, 2017; doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01854

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