How Your Dog Picks His Favorite Person (And How to Tell If It's You)

Your whole family walks in, and your dog runs straight to one person. Is it you? Scientists have measured how dogs choose their person with brain scanners, puzzle toys and complete strangers, and it isn't simply whoever fills the food bowl. Here are four signs that show who your dog is truly attached to, and why a dog who spends the evening with your guests might be paying you a compliment. Chapters 0:00 Is it you? 0:35 Sign 1: contact when you come back 1:17 It's not the food bowl 1:56 Petting beats praise 2:30 The look 3:14 Sign 2: the size of the wag 3:51 Sign 3: he tries harder near you 4:20 Why he leaves you for your guests 5:00 Sign 4: he takes your side 5:39 If it isn't you yet 6:12 How to become his favorite 6:55 Tonight at the door Sources Topál J, Miklósi Á, Csányi V, Dóka A (1998). Attachment behavior in dogs (Canis familiaris): a new application of Ainsworth's (1969) Strange Situation Test. Journal of Comparative Psychology 112(3): 219-229. (51 dogs, Hungary) Cook PF, Prichard A, Spivak M, Berns GS (2016). Awake canine fMRI predicts dogs' preference for praise vs food. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 11(12): 1853-1862. (15 dogs, Atlanta; in 13 of 15 the reward center responded to praise about as strongly as to food or more) Feuerbacher EN, Wynne CDL (2015). Shut up and pet me! Domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) prefer petting to vocal praise in concurrent and single-alternative choice procedures. Behavioural Processes 110: 47-59. Kaminski J, Hynds J, Morris P, Waller BM (2017). Human attention affects facial expressions in domestic dogs. Scientific Reports 7: 12914. Kaminski J, Waller BM, Diogo R, Hartstone-Rose A, Burrows AM (2019). Evolution of facial muscle anatomy in dogs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116(29): 14677-14681. Nagasawa M, Mitsui S, En S, Ohtani N, Ohta M, Sakuma Y, Onaka T, Mogi K, Kikusui T (2015). Oxytocin-gaze positive loop and the coevolution of human-dog bonds. Science 348(6232): 333-336. Quaranta A, Siniscalchi M, Vallortigara G (2007). Asymmetric tail-wagging responses by dogs to different emotive stimuli. Current Biology 17(6): R199-R201. (30 dogs, Italy) Horn L, Huber L, Range F (2013). The importance of the secure base effect for domestic dogs: evidence from a manipulative problem-solving task. PLoS ONE 8(5): e65296. (Vienna) Feuerbacher EN, Wynne CDL (2017). Dogs don't always prefer their owners and can quickly form strong preferences for certain strangers over others. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior 108(3): 305-317. Chijiiwa H, Kuroshima H, Hori Y, Anderson JR, Fujita K (2015). Dogs avoid people who behave negatively to their owner: third-party affective evaluation. Animal Behaviour 106: 123-127. (Kyoto) Sanford EM, Burt ER, Meyers-Manor JE (2018). Timmy's in the well: empathy and prosocial helping in dogs. Learning & Behavior 46(4): 374-386. (about as many dogs opened the door for humming as for crying; for crying, those who opened it got there several times faster) Gácsi M, Topál J, Miklósi Á, Dóka A, Csányi V (2001). Attachment behavior of adult dogs (Canis familiaris) living at rescue centers: forming new bonds. Journal of Comparative Psychology 115(4): 423-431. (60 shelter dogs, 40 of them had three 10-minute sessions with a stranger) Berns GS, Brooks AM, Spivak M (2015). Scent of the familiar: an fMRI study of canine brain responses to familiar and unfamiliar human and dog odors. Behavioural Processes 110: 37-46. For context on food vs petting: Feuerbacher EN, Wynne CDL (2014). Most domestic dogs prefer food to petting: population, context, and schedule effects in concurrent choice. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior 101(3): 385-405. The four signs and the tips at the end are what these studies point to, not a tested checklist. Most of the experiments compare the owner with a stranger, not one family member with another. Illustrations and narration were created with AI tools.