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Puppies Read Body Language

Puppies read body language Recent research out of the Arizona Canine Cognition Center suggests that “man’s best friend” are born ready to read body language and are capable of communicating and interacting with humans at a very young age with no formal training required.

Domestic dogs are born to socialize with humans because we bred them that way; the human-dog relationship goes back between 14,000–30,000 years ago and dogs have evolved alongside us. In fact, research even suggests that good are dogs at reading their owners’ emotions.

In this newest study study called “Early-emerging and highly heritable sensitivity to human communication in dogs” published in Current Biology found that two-month-old puppies can recognize when people are pointing at objects and will gaze at our faces when they’re spoken to – suggesting that dogs have an innate capacity to interact with us through body language.

Although individual relationships with people might influence that behavior, at least 40% of this ability comes from genetics alone, says lead researcher Emily Bray.

“These are quite high numbers, much the same as estimates of the heritability of intelligence in our own species. All these findings suggest that dogs are biologically prepared for communication with humans.”

The Study

Bray and colleagues have been working with Canine Companions, the largest United States service dog organization for people with physical disabilities, for over a decade, conducting research on how dogs think and solve problems.

For her latest study, Bray and colleagues studied 375 golden retriever and labrador trainee service puppies. At eight weeks old they are just old enough to be motivated by treats. Bray and colleagues put the puppies through three tests for human-dog communication:

To understand whether the pups’ early ability could be explained by their biology, all of them were of known heritage with a similar rearing history and pedigree, which helped build a statistical model assessing genetic versus environmental factors.

1) Classic Pointing Experiment

The researchers placed the young dogs between two overturned cups—one containing a treat—and pointing to the one with the treat. The animals understood the nonverbal gesture more than two-thirds of the time, approaching the performance of adult dogs. But they didn’t get any better over a dozen rounds, suggesting they were not learning the behavior.

2) Puppy Talk

In a second experiment, a researcher stood outside a large playpen and, for 30 seconds, engaged in the kind of high-pitched “puppy talk” familiar to almost anyone who has owned a dog: “Hey puppy, look at you! You’re such a good puppy.”

The animals spent an average of 6 seconds staring at the person. Such eye contact is rare among mammals and it’s an important foundation for social interaction with people.

3) Finding Food

In a final test, the researchers taught the puppies to find food in a plastic container, then sealed it with a lid. In contrast to adult dogs, which usually give up after a few seconds and look to humans for assistance, the pups rarely gazed at their scientist companions for help.

This suggested to the researchers that puppies seem to be sensitive to receiving information from humans and that they may not yet know that they can solicit help.

The Findings

This fascinating study suggests that from a young age, dogs display human-like social skills, which have a strong genetic component, meaning these abilities have strong potential to undergo selection.

Bray suggests that their findings might therefore point to an important piece of the domestication story, in that animals with a propensity for communication with our own species might have been selected for in the wolf populations that gave rise to dogs.

The post Puppies Read Body Language first appeared on Humintell.

4 Personal Benefits of Reading Facial Expressions of Emotion

In one of our latest blogs, we wrote about the benefits of reading facial expressions of emotion. Those benefits all had to do with increasing our understanding of others, including gaining insights about their mental states, mindsets, personality, motivation, and intentions.

No doubt obtaining those insights and increasing our understanding of others is great, and we could sure use a LOT more of that in today’s world. But there’s also benefits of reading facial expressions of emotion to ourselves, and more importantly to our own personal effectiveness as well.

Improve Your Personal Effectiveness

Let’s explore how reading facial expressions of emotion in others can benefit one’s own personal effectiveness.

1.  Allows us to self-reflect.

Reading facial expressions of emotion allows for self reflection

Seeing that others may be angry, sad, disgusted, or even happy allows us to think about how we may be contributing to those emotions or how we may be coming off to others to produce their emotional reactions.

When we interpret the reasons why others are emotional, we should consider how we may have contributed to those emotions, which may come from either our words or actions. Even if we think we are being calm, logical, rational, or objective, the way we say things may not be so. For the most part, we are not conscious of our own demeanor and how we may be coming off to others, and that may be a reason why others are emotional.

Being aware of and reading other’s emotional expressions allows us to better monitor ourselves and our own reactions, demeanor, and style; doing so helps us be more effective because we are in control of our responses, not vice versa.

But at the same time, let’s also remember that there’s a danger in interpreting other’s emotional states because of oneself because that may or may not be true. The danger in thinking that way occurs when one consistently thinks that one is the source of other’s emotions. That kind of thinking is a version of what I call the “me theory.”

Another version of the “me theory” says that “I know why the other person is emotional because if I were them I would feel that way.” This also may or may not be true. The only person who really knows why they are emotional is that person and if knowing it is important to you, then you need to be able to get the person to talk about it.

Whenever we train people to read other’s facial expressions of emotion, we always caution in these possibly erroneous interpretations. Instead, what I am saying here is that reading other’s facial expressions of emotion give us a chance to self-reflect about ourselves so that we can be more effective, regardless of whether we are the source of the other person’s emotions.

2. Allows us to be more strategic.

Reading facial expressions of emotion allows us to be more strategic

When we observe other’s emotions, we can stop and think about our where we are in the interaction and consider how we can navigate moving forward given what we just observed so that can be on track and achieve our goals. After all, there’s a reason why someone becomes emotional, and those reasons could include either the content of the conversation or the process of having the conversation.

Regardless of which is the source of the other’s emotion, if we think strategically, we can consider ways in which we can leverage those emotions to achieve our goals (of course in ethical ways).

3. Can lead to growth in one’s interactive skills.

In everyday life, most people really don’t tune into other’s emotional reactions, especially the many nuances of expressions that occur in the ebb and flow of any interaction. Instead, facial expressions and other nonverbal behavior are often just background behavior that occurs above and beyond words, and we often focus on words to the exclusion of the nonverbals.

But if we are more in tune with what’s going on in other people’s emotional reactions, as well as all other kinds of nonverbal behavior, we will be a better listener AND observer, which are beneficial skills that can carry over in any interaction, whether professional or personal.

4. Benefits our relationships.

Reading others’ facial expressions of emotion can be a force multiplier. It allows us to understand others on an emotional basis, deepen our conversations with others, and be the basis for increasing empathy and sharing emotions.

Understanding, acknowledging, and sharing emotions are all foundations for the development and maintenance of rapport and trust. All these indirectly improve one’s own personal effectiveness by enrichening our relationships with those with whom we live, work and play, and better relationships help us be more effective.

Some Pitfalls of Reading Facial Expressions 

But there’s some pitfalls, too, and we mention them here so that we can all be on top of them and don’t let them distract us from being effective.

For one, emotions are contagious. Research on the concept of emotion contagion (especially by the excellent scholar Elaine Hatfield) and on mirror neurons inform us that reading other’s emotional expressions may lead to the triggering of emotions in ourselves. In fact, there may be unconscious and automatic processes at work when we read other’s emotional expressions to do just that.

Becoming emotional can detract us from staying on track, being strategic, and being effective in order to achieve our goals. Thus, when we observe other’s emotional reactions, we also have to recognize our own emotional triggers and sensations that occur when we are emotional so we don’t get distracted or allow those emotions to overwhelm us. Reading facial expressions of emotion in any interaction that is meaningful requires, at least to some degree, that we do so with some clinical detachment. Clinical detachment takes time and effort, especially when conversations involve something that is meaningful for yourself and occur with people who are meaningful to you.

Reading other’s facial expressions of emotion can be perceived as intrusive or rude, especially if one is perceived as staring. Performing this skill well requires one to be practiced well enough to do it naturally in the flow of conversation.

Finally, reading others facial expressions of emotion can be distracting. Because facial behavior is dynamic, paying attention to faces can be seductive and one can easily get sucked in to watching and reading faces and get off track from the purpose of the interaction. Reading others’ facial expressions of emotion should be a means to an end, a hopefully mutually positive and beneficial end, but not an end in itself.

Despite these pitfalls, reading others’ facial expressions of emotion is an amazing skill that not only has benefits for our insights about others; it also can make wonderful contributions to insights about ourselves and the process by which we interact with others.

Engaging in thoughtful and objective interpretation and evaluation of others’ emotions can improve our critical thinking skills. Clearly, improving our own personal effectives and leveraging insights about others as well as ourselves can have direct and indirect benefits to our own personal effectiveness, if and when applied wisely.

For those of you have learned the basics of reading facial expressions of emotion with one of our online courses, challenge yourself to become even more skilled in reading them with other, more advanced courses. For those of you have haven’t yet experienced learning to read facial expressions of emotion with one of our introductory courses, give it a shot! Now’s the time, for all the reasons above.

If you learn to read facial expressions of emotion and incorporate that skill into your professional practices, interviews, negotiations, sales, and the like, it will be a force multiplier like you’ve never witnessed.

 

The post 4 Personal Benefits of Reading Facial Expressions of Emotion first appeared on Humintell.

The Importance of Nonverbal Communication

Is it true that there are 19 different smiles, but only 6 of them are related to happiness? What happens when we smile sadly and what does the rest of our body language convey?

In this video, Humintell’s Dr. David Matsumoto helps explain the world of nonverbal communication to wider audiences. He emphasizes that nonverbal communication is anything that does not include verbal language, but the varieties of nonverbal communication are almost endless.

One of these is based in the environment. What is the lighting of the conversation? Is music playing or is there a specific sound? This helps communicate something. Similarly, our personal characteristics, such as how we dress, convey something revealing about our personality, without us even opening our mouths.

Dr. Matsumoto also describes “behavioral traces.” Even when we are not in the room, certain aspects of our personality can be conveyed. For instance, if somebody were to enter your house without your presence, they would see how you have laid out your room. They would see what you put on the walls. Each of these things communicates something to that person.

Of particular focus, however, are nonverbal behavior which includes the microexpressions, body language, and other slight activities that we engage in. While words are incredibly powerful, they must inevitably exist within a context of non-verbal behavior, and nonverbal communication more broadly.

In fact, when verbal messages contradict non-verbal messages, most of the information we garner from the conversation come from the non-verbal messages. Even though we are often bad at reading these forms of communication, there is still some instinctive receptivity, according to Dr. Matsumoto.

Watch this fascinating interview below!

The post The Importance of Nonverbal Communication first appeared on Humintell.