To some extent, dogs can read our emotions

The reason so many people love dogs is because dogs usually give us the impression of being gentle, friendly, and understanding. Some people feel that their dogs can understand their emotions, so compared to others, they prefer to confide their feelings to their dogs, who often act as a good listener. During this process, dogs behave very seriously, as if they can really comprehend our inner thoughts.

So do dogs really understand our mood? When you happily tell your dog that you were praised today, or got a raise or promotion, or when you feel down because of something unpleasant, can they understand our emotions? When you hear dogs barking joyfully, are they truly happy? Or is this just our own wishful thinking? However, a study published in Contemporary Biology pointed out that dogs and humans process emotional information in sounds similarly in the auditory cortex, so dogs very likely can truly sense the mood we express when we speak.

Researchers from Hungary found that both humans and dogs have brain structures specialized for processing sound information, and both are more sensitive to their "native language." Interestingly, like humans, dogs can also perceive emotions in sounds. This finding suggests that the evolution of the auditory region is older than previously thought, possibly dating back to when humans and dogs were one family—about 100 million years ago. This offers a new perspective for explaining the success of vocal communication between humans and their best friends over tens of thousands of years from both behavioral and neurological mechanisms. This first global study comparing neural imaging of humans and non-primate animals was led by Attila Andics from the Hungarian MTA-ELTE Comparative Ethology Research Group. In the experiment, researchers compared the auditory processing of human voices, dog sounds, environmental noises, and silence (as a blank control) in humans, Golden Retrievers, and Border Collies. "In the study, we used as many sounds with different emotions as possible. The human voices were collected from a database and included sounds expressing all basic emotions—anger, fear, sadness, happiness, disgust, surprise—as well as other internal feelings, such as pain, nausea, sleepiness, and neutrality," explained one of the authors, Tamas Farago. "Dog sounds were collected from social contexts with corresponding emotions, including threat, guarding food, separation, frustration, welcome, play, and affection. Environmental sounds familiar to both humans and dogs, such as bells, music, wind, water, rain, machinery, and telephone sounds, were included. We were especially careful to ensure none of these contained human or other animal voices."

It is evident that to some extent dogs can indeed understand some of the emotions conveyed when we speak. Therefore, whether interacting or training with dogs, we can use this fact. If we find that they have done something wrong, we should loudly scold them, so the dog knows which actions make the owner angry. That is why it is often said that reprimands should be timely and not after the fact, because if dogs truly understand, they would feel confused if suddenly scolded without knowing why.