Humans have a long way to go in understanding a dog's emotions
人类在理解狗的情感方面还有很长的路要走

At least, that's what you think.
至少，这就是你所认为的。

New research from Arizona State University has revealed that people often do not perceive the true meaning of their pet's emotions and can misread their dog. The reasons for this are many and include a human misunderstanding of dog expressions due to a bias towards projecting human emotions onto our pets.
亚利桑那州立大学的新研究揭示，人们常常无法准确理解宠物的情感，容易误读狗狗的情绪。造成这种情况的原因有很多，包括人类对狗狗表情的误解，以及将人类情感投射到宠物身上的偏见。

In a new paper, "Barking up the wrong tree: Human perceptions of dog emotions is influenced by extraneous factors," ASU researchers Holly Molinaro and Clive Wynne outline a pair of experiments they ran to show how humans misperceive dog emotions. Their research shows that humans typically do not have a good understanding of the emotional state of their dog because they judge the dog's emotions according to the context of the event they witness.
在一篇新论文《误入歧途：人类对狗情感的感知受到外部因素的影响》中，亚利桑那州立大学的研究人员霍莉·莫利纳罗和克莱夫·温恩概述了他们进行的一对实验，展示了人类如何误解狗狗的情感。他们的研究表明，人类通常对狗狗的情感状态理解不佳，因为他们根据目击事件的背景来判断狗狗的情绪。

"People do not look at what the dog is doing, instead they look at the situation surrounding the dog and base their emotional perception off of that," said Molinaro, an ASU Ph.D. student in psychology and animal welfare scientist.
“人们并不关注狗狗在做什么，而是关注狗狗周围的环境，并基于此来判断他们的情感，”ASU 心理学博士生和动物福利科学家莫利纳罗说。

"Our dogs are trying to communicate with us, but we humans seem determined to look at everything except the poor pooch himself." added Wynne, an ASU psychology professor who studies dog behavior and the human-dog bond.
“我们的狗狗正在试图与我们沟通，但我们人类似乎决心不去关注可怜的小狗自己。”ASU 心理学教授和研究狗行为及人狗关系的温恩补充道。

Adding to the misunderstanding is a human projection of their feelings onto the dog. This "anthropomorphizing" of the interaction further clouds truly understanding what your dog's emotional state actually may be, what she is trying to tell you.
误解的一个原因是人们将自己的感受投射到狗身上。这种对互动的“拟人化”进一步模糊了真正理解狗的情感状态以及她试图告诉你的内容。

In two experiments, Molinaro and Wynne investigated human perception of dog emotions. They video recorded a dog in what they believed were positive (happy-making) or negative (less happy) situations.
在两项实验中，莫利纳罗和温恩研究了人类对狗情感的感知。他们录像记录了一只狗在他们认为是积极（令人快乐）或消极（不太快乐）情境中的表现。

The happy situations were things like offering the leash or a treat, and the unhappy scenarios included gentle chastisement, or bringing out the dreaded vacuum cleaner. Then, in one experiment they showed ordinary members of the public these videos with and without their visual background. In the second experiment they edited the videos so the dog who had been filmed in a happy context looked like he had been recorded in an unhappy situation, and the dog who had been filmed in an unhappy situation looked like he was in a happy one. In both experiments, people rated how happy and excited they thought the dogs were. Sample size for the first experiment was 383 and for the second experiment was 485.
快乐的情境包括提供牵引绳或零食，而不快乐的场景则包括温和的训斥或拿出令人畏惧的吸尘器。然后，在一项实验中，他们向普通公众展示了这些视频，分别有和没有视觉背景。在第二项实验中，他们编辑了视频，使得在快乐情境中拍摄的狗看起来像是在不快乐的情况下录制的，而在不快乐情境中拍摄的狗看起来像是在快乐的情况下。 在这两项实验中，人们评估了他们认为狗有多快乐和兴奋。第一项实验的样本量为 383，第二项实验的样本量为 485。

What the researchers found was that people's perception of the dog's mood was based on everything in the videos besides the dog himself.
研究人员发现，人们对狗情绪的感知是基于视频中除了狗本身以外的所有内容。

"People do not look at what the dog is doing, instead, they look at the situation surrounding the dog and base their emotional perception on that," Molinaro said. "You see a dog getting a treat, you assume he must be feeling good. You see a dog getting yelled at, you assume he's feeling bad. These assumptions of how you think the dog is feeling have nothing to do with the dog's behavior or emotional cues, which is very striking."

"In our study, when people saw a video of a dog apparently reacting to a vacuum cleaner, everyone said the dog was feeling bad and agitated," she continued. "But when they saw a video of the dog doing the exact same thing, but this time appearing to react to seeing his leash, everyone reported that the dog was feeling happy and calm. People were not judging a dog's emotions based on the dog's behavior, but on the situation the dog was in."

Further complicating the communication process is people's projection of their emotions onto the dog. Molinaro explained that while humans and dogs have shared a bond over the centuries, that doesn't mean their emotional processing, or even emotional expressions, are the same.

"I have always found this idea that dogs and humans must have the same emotions to be very biased and without any real scientific proof to back it up, so I wanted to see if there are factors that might actually be affecting our perception of dog emotions," Molinaro said. "If there were, if we as humans focused on other aspects not relating to the dog to deduce their emotional state, then as both scientists and pet owners, we really have to go back to the drawing board."

Molinaro explained that even in studies of human perception of human emotions it is clear that there is more to reading emotion than just looking at a person's face. Culture, mood, situational context, even a previous facial expression can influence how people perceive emotions. Yet when it comes to animal emotions, no one has yet studied if those same factors affect us in the same way.

"Our research here shows that for one of those factors, the situational context, it does."

So how does a good dog owner cut through the biases and misreadings to understand their pets true emotional state?

"The first step is just to be aware that we are not that good at reading dogs' emotions," she said. "We need to be humbler in our understanding of our dogs. Once we can start from a basis of understanding our biases, we can begin to look at our pups in a new light."

"Every dog's personality, and thus her emotional expressions, are unique to that dog," Molinaro explains. "Really pay attention to your own dog's cues and behaviors."

"When you yell at your dog for doing something bad and she makes that guilty face, is it really because she is guilty, or is it because she is scared you are going to reprimand her more? Taking an extra second or two to focus on your dog's behaviors, knowing that you need to overcome a bias to view the situation around the dog rather than the dog himself, can go a long way in getting a true read on your own dog's emotional state, leading to a stronger bond between the two of you."

Molinaro and Wynne's research is published in the journal Anthrozoos.