Look, He’s Smiling! Children’s Misinterpretation of Dogs’ Facial Expressions

Abstract

Human–dog interactions have shown psychological, social, and physiological benefits in children and adults. Dogs are the most frequent pets in many countries, and to enable safe and mutually beneficial human–dog interactions, correct interpretation of dogs’ signaling is vital. Hospital admissions related to dog bites show yearly increases, with young children most affected, and dog bites present a significant public health problem worldwide, with substantial health and financial costs. Interactions in home environments with familiar dogs seem to trigger most bite incidents; however, it remains unclear why child–dog interactions escalate to a bite. Studies using dog videos demonstrate that children do not understand dogs’ body language well, but empirical evidence on children’s interpretation of dogs’ facial expressions, especially aggressive displays, is still scarce and needs further investigation. Children (n = 89) aged 4, 5, 6, and 7 years and 30 adults were tested with photos of “angry,” “happy,” and “neutral” human and dog facial expressions. While the adults made hardly any mistakes with aggressive faces, 67% of 4-year-olds misunderstood aggressive dog faces, with close to 40% of errors for dogs’, but not humans’, aggressive expressions. Seventy percent of 5-year-olds showed 35% errors, 58% of 6-year-olds displayed 25% errors, and just under half of 7-year-olds showed 17% of misinterpretation errors of dogs’ aggressive facial expressions, but not of human aggressive faces. Strikingly, misinterpretation of aggressive dog faces as “happy” was the most frequent error in children. These results highlight the dangerous lack in children’s abilities to interpret dogs’ facial expressions, which likely contributes to the consistently high incidence of dog bites in younger children. This study advances our knowledge of how children (mis)categorize dogs’ facial expressions. The results should be incorporated into dog bite prevention programs used by teachers, parenting classes, and dog-assisted intervention providers/users to raise awareness, educate, and prevent future dog bite incidents.