Your Mood Can Change How You See Your Dog’s Emotions According to a Surprising New Study

A new scientific study from Arizona State University is challenging a long-held assumption about how humans interpret emotions — especially when it comes to dogs. While psychologists have known for decades that a person’s mood strongly influences how they perceive other people’s emotions, this research shows that the same rule does not apply neatly to our canine companions. In fact, it may work in the opposite direction.

The study reveals that when people feel happy, they may actually perceive dogs as looking sadder, and when people feel down, they may judge dogs as appearing happier. This unexpected finding highlights how complex — and still poorly understood — human-dog emotional communication really is.

Why This Study Was Conducted

Humans are naturally wired to project their own emotions onto others. Numerous psychological studies show that when someone is in a positive mood, they tend to interpret other humans’ facial expressions and behavior more positively. Likewise, negative moods often lead to more negative interpretations.

Researchers at Arizona State University wanted to know whether this same psychological bias applies when humans interpret the emotions of dogs. Since dogs live closely with humans and are often treated as emotional companions, understanding how people read canine emotions has real-world implications for animal welfare, training, and care.

The research was led by Holly Molinaro, an animal welfare scientist, and Clive Wynne, a psychology professor and director of ASU’s Canine Science Collaboratory. Their findings were published in the peer-reviewed journal PeerJ in 2025.

The Dogs Featured in the Research

To ensure realism and variety, the researchers used three real dogs with different ages and breeds:

• Oliver, a 14-year-old mixed-breed dog
• Canyon, a 1-year-old Catahoula dog
• Henry, a 3-year-old French bulldog

These dogs were filmed reacting to everyday situations designed to trigger positive, neutral, or negative emotional states. Importantly, the dogs were filmed by their own owners, helping ensure natural reactions rather than forced behaviors.

How the Dog Emotions Were Created

Each dog was exposed to simple, familiar cues:

• Positive situations included treats, toys, or hearing exciting phrases. For example, Henry reacted positively just by hearing that he was going to see “Grandma.”
• Negative situations involved mild stressors such as seeing a vacuum cleaner or, in Oliver’s case, being shown a cat.
• Neutral situations showed the dogs resting, waiting, or doing nothing in particular.

The researchers then edited the videos so that only the dog was visible, placed against a black background. This removed environmental distractions and helped participants focus entirely on the dog’s body language and facial expressions.

Experiment One: Mood Priming With Human Images

In the first experiment, around 300 undergraduate students participated. Before watching the dog videos, participants were shown images from a standardized psychological image set commonly used to influence mood. These images were designed to make people feel happy, neutral, or sad.

Afterward, participants watched short clips of the dogs and rated how happy or sad each dog appeared, as well as how calm or excited they seemed.

The result was surprising. Although the mood-priming images successfully altered the participants’ emotional states, those mood changes had no significant effect on how participants interpreted the dogs’ emotions. This directly contradicted what usually happens when people judge other humans.

Experiment Two: Mood Priming With Dog Images

To better understand the unexpected outcome, the researchers designed a second experiment with another group of 300 undergraduate students. This time, instead of using general images, the researchers used dog-specific images to influence participants’ moods.

Participants saw images of happy dogs playing, puppies in cute settings, or dogs in sad or distressing situations such as being alone or behind bars. The goal was to see whether priming mood using dog imagery would produce a different effect.

It did — but not in the way anyone expected.

Participants who viewed happy dog images tended to rate the dogs in the videos as sadder. Meanwhile, those who viewed sad dog images rated the same dogs as happier. This reversal shocked the researchers and suggested that a contrast effect, rather than emotional projection, was at play.

What Is a Contrast Effect?

A contrast effect occurs when people judge something not on its own merits, but in comparison to something they have just seen. In this case, seeing extremely happy dogs may have made the dogs in the videos appear less happy by comparison, while seeing sad dogs may have made the video dogs seem relatively more upbeat.

This effect appears to override the typical mood-congruence bias seen in human-to-human emotional judgments. According to the researchers, this suggests that humans process animal emotions very differently from human emotions.

An Unexpected Bonus Finding

Another interesting discovery emerged during the experiments. Regardless of whether the dogs in the videos appeared happy or stressed, watching dog videos generally improved participants’ moods.

Even videos showing dogs in mildly negative situations tended to lift viewers’ emotional states. This finding aligns with previous research suggesting that exposure to animals — even through screens — can have mood-boosting effects on humans.

Why These Findings Matter

Misinterpreting a dog’s emotional state can have serious consequences. Owners may miss signs of stress, fear, or discomfort, leading to inappropriate handling or delayed intervention. Trainers, veterinarians, and shelter workers rely heavily on human interpretation of animal behavior, and this research suggests those interpretations may be more biased than previously thought.

The study highlights significant gaps in human understanding of canine emotions, despite thousands of years of shared history between humans and dogs. While dogs have evolved to read human cues remarkably well, humans may still struggle to accurately read dogs — especially when their own emotions interfere.

What This Means for Dog Owners

For everyday dog owners, this research serves as a reminder to avoid relying solely on gut feelings or emotional assumptions when interpreting a dog’s behavior. Learning objective signs of stress, relaxation, and excitement — such as ear position, tail movement, posture, and context — may be more reliable than emotional impressions.

Being aware of personal mood and bias can also help owners make more informed decisions about their dog’s wellbeing.

The Bigger Picture of Human-Animal Relationships

This study contributes to a growing body of research examining how human psychology shapes our interactions with animals. Understanding these biases is crucial not just for dogs, but for improving animal welfare across farms, shelters, laboratories, and homes.

The findings suggest that truly understanding animals requires scientific observation, not emotional projection — no matter how strong the human-animal bond feels.

Research Reference

Paw-spective shift: how our mood alters the way we read dog emotions
https://peerj.com/articles/20411/