Decoding dog emotions starts with context, not cues

You’re on the couch. Your dog looks up. Head tilt. Big eyes. Tail twitch. You smile, convinced they’re happy. Maybe even proud. But what if you’re wrong? According to new research from Arizona State University, most of us aren’t actually reading our dogs’ emotions—we’re reading the room.

In the study, nearly 900 participants were shown videos of dogs reacting to different situations: a treat, a walk, a scolding, a vacuum. Sometimes viewers got the full scene. Other times, they only saw the dog.

The results? People only made consistent emotional judgments when they saw the full context. The same waggy reaction looked happy in a treat scenario—but anxious when the dog was reacting to a vacuum.

It wasn’t about the tail or the ears. It was about what else was happening. It turns out, we’re wired to humanize everything—even our pets. And dogs, with their expressive faces and synchronized routines, are especially easy targets.

But Holly Molinaro and Clive Wynne, the researchers behind the study, suggest this can be misleading. “People base their emotional reading off the context, not the animal,” Molinaro explains.

That means your own emotions, history, and expectations are often steering the interpretation. This doesn’t mean your pup’s not trying to communicate. It means they’re using a language we might not fully understand—unless we slow down.

Every dog has a unique emotional baseline. Yours might zoom around the house when they’re excited; another might just blink and stretch. If you’re only reading “excited” as tail wag = happy, you could miss signs of stress—or overinterpret joy.

The study also points to a deeper shift in how we read emotions overall. In an era of emoji reactions and face filters, even human expressions aren’t universal anymore. So it makes sense we’d project our own interpretations onto dogs too.

You. That’s the cue. Your interpretation is shaped by your mood, your context, your assumptions. To get better at decoding dog emotions, watch patterns. Learn your dog’s specific tells. Consider their personality, their history, their preferences. Don’t just read their face. Read the moment.

This research doesn’t just teach us how to see our dogs more clearly—it holds up a mirror. We’re constantly decoding emotions, not just in pets but in partners, kids, coworkers. And so often, we think we’re reading them… when we’re really reading ourselves.

Maybe the better question isn’t “What is my dog feeling?”
Maybe it’s: “What am I bringing to the moment?”