April 6, 2023 • 21 mins
Did you know that dogs have an easier time learning their name if it ends in a “y?” That’s just one of the many insights Amherst College psychology professor Catherine Sanderson shares with host Steven Schragis in this episode about the relationship between humans and dogs. There are many health benefits to being a “dog person.” Owning a cat, however, is a slightly different story.
One Day University is a co-production of iHeart Podcasts and School of Humans. It is a Curiosity Podcast. You can sign up at the website OneDayU.com to become a member and access over 700 full length video lectures. You can also download their app. Once you’re a member, you can watch Professor Catherine Sanderson’s lecture, “Dogs and Humans: Why Has This Bond Been so Long-Lasting?”
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
With due apologies to the people who own a cat,
you know, ferret, turtle, goldfish, whatever, there actually seems to
be a unique benefit to dog ownership. Welcome to one
day University Talks with the world's most engaging and inspiring
(00:24):
professors discussing their most popular courses. This podcast is your
chance to discover some of our top rated lectures on
your own schedule. I'm Steven Schragis, and this episode is
going to the dogs, or more specifically, human's obsession with
dogs and why we consider them part of the family.
(00:46):
But if you're a cat person, don't worry. We've got
some interesting research for you too. Professor Katherine Sanderson recently
gave a one day university lecture titled Dogs and Humans
Why has this bond been so long lasting? She's the
chair of Psychology at Amherst College and her research has
(01:06):
received grant funding from the National Science Foundation. Catherine is
fascinated by the relationship between humans and dogs, and yes,
she's got a furry family member at home. I would
have to admit that I am a dog person, and
(01:27):
my husband and I kind of have a joke about
that because for years I've said I'm really not a
dog person, But I love dogs. I currently have one dog,
who is the third dog that I've had, and I
will say that dogs consistently bring me and my family
lots of joy, lots of happiness, and I look forward
to sharing lots of scientific information with the listeners. Speaking
(01:50):
of scientific information, you opened your lecture with some statistics
which I wrote down. Ninety four percent of dog owners
consider their dog part of the family. Okay, forty three
percent of dogs sleep in their owners beds, thirty two
percent celebrate their dog's birthday. Sixty five percent of dog
owners take more pictures of their dog than their significant other.
(02:13):
Here's the big one, though, A hundred percent of dogs
receive a holiday gift. Can you elaborate on that one
a bit, because that's surprised me. So what's funny to
me is the one that surprises me is that ninety
four percent of dog owners consider their dog apart of
the family. And that surprises me only in that I'm like,
who are the six percent of people who do not
(02:34):
consider their dog a part of their family? But I
will say that overwhelmingly, what the research shows is that
people very much do consider their dog a part of
their family and so therefore, when there's a holiday, it
makes sense that you are celebrating that dog with a
gift as much as you are with your children and
(02:55):
your family members. And to me, that really illustrates the
extent to which will really do embrace having a dog
as part of their family. These statistics made me wonder
how long has the scientific community been studying dogs? Is
this like a relatively new field. So it's not a
relatively new field in terms of the science, but I
(03:16):
think it's very much a new field in terms of
the psychology. So people have certainly examined owning dogs, the
benefits of dogs, the sort of evolutionary features of moving
from wolves to dogs, and so on within biology, and
in particular, what are different features that distinguish dogs, you
(03:39):
know now versus historically, or dogs from wolves, or frankly
dogs from other kinds of animals. But I will say
that in terms of psychology, this is a relatively new field,
and I think it really sort of took off in
part because of the growing awareness that dogs weren't just pets,
but the dogs also have some real and tangible benefits
(04:02):
to happiness and health, which I think we're going to
get into a little bit later. Okay, we are going
to get into that, but let me just add the
non psychology part, the relationship between wolves and dogs and
how that is where it all started. Can you tell
us a little bit about that, right, So, that is
actually something really interesting, and to be perfectly honest, is
(04:23):
within biology really not within psychology. But what the research
suggests is that years ago, thirty thousand or so years ago,
wolves begged humans for food, so that was a clear
benefit to the wolf. However, they also assisted humans with
hunting and therefore it became kind of a symbiotic relationship.
(04:45):
It's also clear that wolves and then eventually dogs provided
body heat and comfort. We've heard about dogs providing transportations,
so dog sleds with lots of different dogs providing an
opportunity for humans to not have to walk through snowy
ground but in fact to be pulled. So all of
(05:05):
that suggest that dogs were beneficial to survival for humans.
And over time there became this domestication and also selective
breeding of dogs, which led to this genetic divergence between
wolves which stay as wild animals, and dogs which became domesticated.
(05:26):
And we really see this divergence happening, and increasingly dogs
have changed in terms of their features. We can tell
particular distinctions in that dogs, unlike wolves, but also unlike
horses and cats and so on, seem to show particular
features such as an ability to do what we call
(05:48):
mutual eyegazs, to literally stare into somebody's face. It's basically
right above your eyebrows, and it's also right above your
dogs the equivalent of eyebrows, and this is a particular
muscle that allows us to do eye gaze. So humans
have it, babies have it, dogs have it. Wolves do not.
(06:09):
So this suggests that this muscle, in fact, is a
key part of allowing the ability to do mutual eyegays,
to stare into somebody else's eyes, and this is an
example of the kind of differentiation between dogs and humans.
What's also particularly interesting here is that this is something
that we see as representing intimacy. So we stare into
(06:34):
the eyes of somebody who we love, who we care about.
Parents stare into the eyes of their babies, We stare
into the eyes of our romantic partners. And this ability
to do mutual eye gaze with our dogs is really
a clear sign of intimacy and attachment. Now let's move
on to this psychology of it all. There are actual
health benefits to owning a dog. Why don't you tell
(06:57):
us about that. So some of the most clear evidence
within the field of health psychology is that, in fact,
the presence of dogs reduces stress. And they've studied this
in a lot of different ways. And one of the
things that I find most intriguing here is that you
see this evidence with even very young children. So children
(07:17):
who are in the presence of a dog actually show
lower heart rate, reactivity, blood pressure when they're doing something stressful, like,
for example, taking a math test. We know that with
people who have PTSD, being paired with a service dog
also reduces their symptoms, and in fact, this is at
(07:38):
some levels as beneficial as medication. So what we know
is that the presence of dogs is really beneficial in
terms of reducing levels of physiological arousal in ways that
clearly are beneficial in terms of stress. Let me delve
into that a little more. I've heard you talk about
putting dogs in an MRI machine. Not an easy thing,
(07:59):
I bet, but that's an intriguing thing to think about.
That image is hard to get out of your head.
So this is really interesting research, and I share your
admiration for any researcher who is going to take the
time to allow a dog to get comfortable enough to
go into an fMRI machine. But what they've done in
these studies is they've put dogs in fMRI machines and
(08:22):
then they've studied patterns of brain activation in response to
different kind of stimuli. And what that research has shown
is that dogs actually process words and emotions in the
brain in a very similar way to what you see
with humans. And so what this means it is, at
some level, dogs are actually having emotional reactions in ways
(08:46):
that are very similar to humans. Dogs, for example, can
distinguish different kinds of emotional expressions on people's faces, so
they can tell the difference between, for example, fear and sadness,
or or happiness and so on. And so this means
that the part of the brain that is activated for
a dog when seeing particular emotional expressions actually looks very
(09:10):
much like what you see in terms of how emotion
expressions are processed in humans brains. So dogs can understand
us or is that too simplistic a statement? I think
on some level, dogs really can understand us, and dogs
can key into probably very very subtle cues. So we've
(09:32):
known for a long time, and anyone who's owned a
dog would already be aware of this that dogs rely
heavily on their sense of smell. So dogs rely on
smell to recognize someone in a way that most people,
of course do not. So that's an example of how
dogs are actually queuing into things on some level better
(09:52):
than humans can. So in some senses, dogs may be
able to perceive things like stress or anxiet, whether that's
measured in facial expression or scent. It's why researchers have
used dogs to sniff out bombs or explosives or drugs
(10:12):
in airports, why in some cases researchers and medicine are
actually looking at dogs as being able to smell signs
of ovarian cancer before these signs are actually evident in
screenings that people would actually go through. So on some levels,
dogs may actually have better abilities to pick up on
(10:34):
subtle things than humans do. What about though, recognizing words
and language. Can you talk to your dog and they
understand you, I think at a low level absolutely so.
In fact, the example that I always give with students
in my intro to psychology class is that we speak
to dogs exactly in the same way that we speak
(10:55):
to babies. So if you talk to a dog, you'll
say do you want to go for a walk, and
you won't say do you want to go for a walk,
And that's exactly the kind of speech that we use
when we talk to babies. For years, as an undergraduate,
I actually did research with language acquisition as an undergraduate
at Stanford. This is what my undergraduate honor thesis was
(11:16):
on and what that research showed, even way back then
was that we use this particular pattern and intonation of speech.
At the time that I was in college, it was
called Mothery's We actually now call it parent ease within psychology.
But this is exactly how we speak to dogs. That
we accentuate with a high pitch, the word that is important,
(11:39):
do you want to go for a walk? Do you
want to go for a ride in the car? That
These are all examples of things that influence how we
speak to dogs. Now, it's also clear that dogs can
understand that. If we look at what we name dogs,
overwhelmingly many of the most popular dog names have this
ability to do that kind of sing songy speech. So
(12:02):
lots of dog names end with why so Daisy, Lucy, Molly, Buddy, Charlie, Rocky.
I've just given you six three female names, three male
names that are the most popular puppy names. And there's
a reason for that that we in fact believe that
(12:23):
dogs can understand their names easier when they have this
kind of sing songy speech. So dogs can pick up
on their names, but dogs can also pick up on
other kinds of words that we're using in the environment.
I never heard anything like that that is really interesting
about the general area of dog names. Can you get specific?
I know you have dogs, How have you named your dogs?
(12:46):
What was your thought process? Yeah? So I love that question,
and I will say that I have had three dogs.
The first one was called Hoby. You can imagine that
ended and why. The next one was called Daisy. Our
third dog is called Lily. And literally two weeks ago
I started fostering a dog and that dog was given
to me with the name. So the dog arrived with
(13:07):
the name, and I was told this dog's name is
john and I immediately you can probably predict where I'm going.
I immediately changed that dog's name to Johnny. So it
was not my dog. It was a loner dog, a
temporary dog that I was fostering a puppy. But I
immediately started calling him Johnny because I wanted him to
learn his name, because that actually makes it easier for
him to be responsive to his future owner. So we
(13:30):
literally started calling him Johnny, and I am delighted to
report that he was adopted and his new owner is
going to keep calling him Johnny. After the break, Catherine
tells us how your dog may help you live longer,
and the difference between dog and cat owners. Owning a
(14:02):
dog seems to affect people's life expectancy, how long they're
going to live. What's going on there, So this is
one of the most practically important findings. And what the
research shows, in fact, is that owning a dog actually
decreases somebody's risk of dying in a given year about
(14:23):
twenty four percent, and the benefit of dog ownership is
actually even greater thirty one percent for people who have
already had a heart attack or a stroke, suggesting that
for people who are at a more medically fragile point,
the benefits are particularly strong. I will also note that
that study I just described is worldwide so this is
(14:46):
not a uniquely American finding or Western culture kind of finding.
It seems to be that there is a benefit, generally speaking,
from dog ownership. Are there other health benefits? People who
own a dog tend to have lower rates of of
blood pressure, they tend to have higher overall mood, So
it seems to be sort of broadly beneficial, not just
(15:07):
in terms of life expectancy, so yes, in terms of
life expectancy, but also very clearly there seem to be
benefits in terms of psychological wellbeing as well. And the
same thing is true if you own a cat, or
a fish or a hamster, right who, With due apologies
to the people who own a cat, you know, ferret, turtle, goldfish, whatever,
(15:28):
there actually seems to be a unique benefit to dog ownership.
So we actually don't see evidence for the unique benefits
of any other kind of pet other than dogs. It
doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but it means there is
not yet scientific data I can point to that supports that. Catherine,
you've described yourself as a dog person, proudly as a
(15:50):
dog person, but a lot of our listeners would call
themselves cat people. You want to tell us a little
about the difference between a cat person and a person
and how you contrast them. Sure, a great question, and
so I'll say a couple of things about that. And
I'll also say, in the interest of full disclosure, I
also have a cat. So in addition to having dogs,
(16:10):
I also have a cat and have had a cat
for a very long time. Different cats, but currently I
have a cat as well. So I'll say a couple
of different things. One, what the research shows is that
some of the unique benefits of having a dog maybe
due to things that we do with dogs that we
don't do with cats. So, for example, we walk our dogs.
Most of us do not walk our cats. So when
(16:32):
we talk about the benefits of dog ownership as opposed
to cat ownership, in all honesty, it may be that
dogs are kind of a proxy for exercise. So we
have a dog, and therefore we walk it. And so
it's really not that the owning the dog is the
good thing in terms of health or longevity. It's really
that walking is something we are much more likely to
do with dogs than cats, and that's where you're getting
(16:54):
the benefit. Relatedly, when you walk with a dog, you
get human connect action because overwhelmingly when you're walking with
the dog, you meet other people and they say, what's
your dog's name, how old is your dog? What kind
of dog is that? And so it also may be
that dogs are kind of giving us access to some
kind of a social network in a way that cats
do not. I've also talked about dogs as giving us
(17:16):
unconditional love, and frankly, there are lots of people who
would say, my cat does that for me as well.
And so people who feel that they have a connection
with their cat and their cat is responsive to them,
that their cat also recognizes their voice, recognizes their footsteps,
and so on. For people who have that sort of
a relationship with their cat, you may in fact beginning
(17:39):
similar benefits. Now, when you gave this lecture, the other
thing that jumped out to a lot of people was
the idea of jealous dogs, which you confirmed dogs can
get jealous. There's been research you want to tell us
about that I do, and that is a really interesting finding.
But what they did in the study act actually created
(18:01):
fake dogs, but realistic looking fake dogs, and they had
pet owners pay attention to, hold, talk to, etc. These
fake dogs, and that actually seemed to bother their actual dog.
This again is an example of something that is exactly
what you see in terms of babies, so very young babies.
(18:25):
If a mom or a dad is holding another baby,
babies will show jealousy. They'll really react to that. And
dogs seem to do exactly the same kind of thing.
They come over, they kind of insert themselves between you
and the even fake dog. So they are having a
very human response to having their attachment figure paying attention
(18:47):
to someone else. So dogs again very much like babies
in lots of ways. Well, Catherine, as you know, I
ran One Day University for fourteen years. You always like
to start with a joke, and you usually finished with
a joke. When you gave this talk, you finished with
a joke, and that might be a good finish to
this podcast. That is a great finish. Well, I'm actually
(19:09):
going to end with two jokes. You're gonna get two jokes.
So one, when I talk about the science of Happiness,
which is my I think most popular talk at One
Day University, I always described how dogs give us a
particular kind of love, unconditional love, which everybody of course knows.
And then I say, my husband and I have been
married for what will now be thirty years this August,
(19:30):
and I say, we have three kids, we have this
two dogs. We have the following deal. If one of
us leaves, the person who leaves takes the three kids,
and the other person gets the dogs. And that has
kept our relationship very strong. I've ended with that joke
for years, but about five years ago a man came
up to me, and I remember it vividly. It was
in a talk I gave in Dallas, and he said,
(19:50):
I have the perfect joke for you to end with.
And this is in fact the joke that I now
end with. And here's the joke. Imagine you come home
from work one day and you put your wife and
your dog in the trunk of a car. Then you
drive around for an hour. At the end of that hour,
when you open up the trunk, guess who's still happy
to see you. And that joke really sort of epitomizes
(20:12):
why dogs are so beneficial, because you know what, the
dog would be still really happy to see you. Catherine,
thank you so much for this. We really appreciate it,
and I hope I see you again soon. More dogs
is good for us all. That's the key takeaway. Thanks
for joining us here at one day University. Sign up
at our website one day you dot com to become
(20:36):
a member and access over seven hundred full length video
lectures from the world's finest professors. You can also download
our app. There you can learn more about today's episode
and watch Amherst Professor Katherine Sanderson's lecture on dogs and Humans,
as well as her talks on the science of happiness,
understanding intelligence, and more. Join us next time when we
(20:59):
talk about wealth in America. We have been struggling as
a society to make sense and figure out what to
do about wealth inequality since the late nineteenth century. One
Day University is a production of iHeart Podcasts and School
of Humans. If you're enjoying the show, leave a review
in your favorite podcast now. You can also check out
(21:20):
other Curiosity podcasts to learn about history, pop culture, true crime,
and more. School of Humans
With due apologies to the people who own a cat,
you know, ferret, turtle, goldfish, whatever, there actually seems to
be a unique benefit to dog ownership. Welcome to one
day University Talks with the world's most engaging and inspiring
(00:24):
professors discussing their most popular courses. This podcast is your
chance to discover some of our top rated lectures on
your own schedule. I'm Steven Schragis, and this episode is
going to the dogs, or more specifically, human's obsession with
dogs and why we consider them part of the family.
(00:46):
But if you're a cat person, don't worry. We've got
some interesting research for you too. Professor Katherine Sanderson recently
gave a one day university lecture titled Dogs and Humans
Why has this bond been so long lasting? She's the
chair of Psychology at Amherst College and her research has
(01:06):
received grant funding from the National Science Foundation. Catherine is
fascinated by the relationship between humans and dogs, and yes,
she's got a furry family member at home. I would
have to admit that I am a dog person, and
(01:27):
my husband and I kind of have a joke about
that because for years I've said I'm really not a
dog person, But I love dogs. I currently have one dog,
who is the third dog that I've had, and I
will say that dogs consistently bring me and my family
lots of joy, lots of happiness, and I look forward
to sharing lots of scientific information with the listeners. Speaking
(01:50):
of scientific information, you opened your lecture with some statistics
which I wrote down. Ninety four percent of dog owners
consider their dog part of the family. Okay, forty three
percent of dogs sleep in their owners beds, thirty two
percent celebrate their dog's birthday. Sixty five percent of dog
owners take more pictures of their dog than their significant other.
(02:13):
Here's the big one, though, A hundred percent of dogs
receive a holiday gift. Can you elaborate on that one
a bit, because that's surprised me. So what's funny to
me is the one that surprises me is that ninety
four percent of dog owners consider their dog apart of
the family. And that surprises me only in that I'm like,
who are the six percent of people who do not
(02:34):
consider their dog a part of their family? But I
will say that overwhelmingly, what the research shows is that
people very much do consider their dog a part of
their family and so therefore, when there's a holiday, it
makes sense that you are celebrating that dog with a
gift as much as you are with your children and
(02:55):
your family members. And to me, that really illustrates the
extent to which will really do embrace having a dog
as part of their family. These statistics made me wonder
how long has the scientific community been studying dogs? Is
this like a relatively new field. So it's not a
relatively new field in terms of the science, but I
(03:16):
think it's very much a new field in terms of
the psychology. So people have certainly examined owning dogs, the
benefits of dogs, the sort of evolutionary features of moving
from wolves to dogs, and so on within biology, and
in particular, what are different features that distinguish dogs, you
(03:39):
know now versus historically, or dogs from wolves, or frankly
dogs from other kinds of animals. But I will say
that in terms of psychology, this is a relatively new field,
and I think it really sort of took off in
part because of the growing awareness that dogs weren't just pets,
but the dogs also have some real and tangible benefits
(04:02):
to happiness and health, which I think we're going to
get into a little bit later. Okay, we are going
to get into that, but let me just add the
non psychology part, the relationship between wolves and dogs and
how that is where it all started. Can you tell
us a little bit about that, right, So, that is
actually something really interesting, and to be perfectly honest, is
(04:23):
within biology really not within psychology. But what the research
suggests is that years ago, thirty thousand or so years ago,
wolves begged humans for food, so that was a clear
benefit to the wolf. However, they also assisted humans with
hunting and therefore it became kind of a symbiotic relationship.
(04:45):
It's also clear that wolves and then eventually dogs provided
body heat and comfort. We've heard about dogs providing transportations,
so dog sleds with lots of different dogs providing an
opportunity for humans to not have to walk through snowy
ground but in fact to be pulled. So all of
(05:05):
that suggest that dogs were beneficial to survival for humans.
And over time there became this domestication and also selective
breeding of dogs, which led to this genetic divergence between
wolves which stay as wild animals, and dogs which became domesticated.
(05:26):
And we really see this divergence happening, and increasingly dogs
have changed in terms of their features. We can tell
particular distinctions in that dogs, unlike wolves, but also unlike
horses and cats and so on, seem to show particular
features such as an ability to do what we call
(05:48):
mutual eyegazs, to literally stare into somebody's face. It's basically
right above your eyebrows, and it's also right above your
dogs the equivalent of eyebrows, and this is a particular
muscle that allows us to do eye gaze. So humans
have it, babies have it, dogs have it. Wolves do not.
(06:09):
So this suggests that this muscle, in fact, is a
key part of allowing the ability to do mutual eyegays,
to stare into somebody else's eyes, and this is an
example of the kind of differentiation between dogs and humans.
What's also particularly interesting here is that this is something
that we see as representing intimacy. So we stare into
(06:34):
the eyes of somebody who we love, who we care about.
Parents stare into the eyes of their babies, We stare
into the eyes of our romantic partners. And this ability
to do mutual eye gaze with our dogs is really
a clear sign of intimacy and attachment. Now let's move
on to this psychology of it all. There are actual
health benefits to owning a dog. Why don't you tell
(06:57):
us about that. So some of the most clear evidence
within the field of health psychology is that, in fact,
the presence of dogs reduces stress. And they've studied this
in a lot of different ways. And one of the
things that I find most intriguing here is that you
see this evidence with even very young children. So children
(07:17):
who are in the presence of a dog actually show
lower heart rate, reactivity, blood pressure when they're doing something stressful, like,
for example, taking a math test. We know that with
people who have PTSD, being paired with a service dog
also reduces their symptoms, and in fact, this is at
(07:38):
some levels as beneficial as medication. So what we know
is that the presence of dogs is really beneficial in
terms of reducing levels of physiological arousal in ways that
clearly are beneficial in terms of stress. Let me delve
into that a little more. I've heard you talk about
putting dogs in an MRI machine. Not an easy thing,
(07:59):
I bet, but that's an intriguing thing to think about.
That image is hard to get out of your head.
So this is really interesting research, and I share your
admiration for any researcher who is going to take the
time to allow a dog to get comfortable enough to
go into an fMRI machine. But what they've done in
these studies is they've put dogs in fMRI machines and
(08:22):
then they've studied patterns of brain activation in response to
different kind of stimuli. And what that research has shown
is that dogs actually process words and emotions in the
brain in a very similar way to what you see
with humans. And so what this means it is, at
some level, dogs are actually having emotional reactions in ways
(08:46):
that are very similar to humans. Dogs, for example, can
distinguish different kinds of emotional expressions on people's faces, so
they can tell the difference between, for example, fear and sadness,
or or happiness and so on. And so this means
that the part of the brain that is activated for
a dog when seeing particular emotional expressions actually looks very
(09:10):
much like what you see in terms of how emotion
expressions are processed in humans brains. So dogs can understand
us or is that too simplistic a statement? I think
on some level, dogs really can understand us, and dogs
can key into probably very very subtle cues. So we've
(09:32):
known for a long time, and anyone who's owned a
dog would already be aware of this that dogs rely
heavily on their sense of smell. So dogs rely on
smell to recognize someone in a way that most people,
of course do not. So that's an example of how
dogs are actually queuing into things on some level better
(09:52):
than humans can. So in some senses, dogs may be
able to perceive things like stress or anxiet, whether that's
measured in facial expression or scent. It's why researchers have
used dogs to sniff out bombs or explosives or drugs
(10:12):
in airports, why in some cases researchers and medicine are
actually looking at dogs as being able to smell signs
of ovarian cancer before these signs are actually evident in
screenings that people would actually go through. So on some levels,
dogs may actually have better abilities to pick up on
(10:34):
subtle things than humans do. What about though, recognizing words
and language. Can you talk to your dog and they
understand you, I think at a low level absolutely so.
In fact, the example that I always give with students
in my intro to psychology class is that we speak
to dogs exactly in the same way that we speak
(10:55):
to babies. So if you talk to a dog, you'll
say do you want to go for a walk, and
you won't say do you want to go for a walk,
And that's exactly the kind of speech that we use
when we talk to babies. For years, as an undergraduate,
I actually did research with language acquisition as an undergraduate
at Stanford. This is what my undergraduate honor thesis was
(11:16):
on and what that research showed, even way back then
was that we use this particular pattern and intonation of speech.
At the time that I was in college, it was
called Mothery's We actually now call it parent ease within psychology.
But this is exactly how we speak to dogs. That
we accentuate with a high pitch, the word that is important,
(11:39):
do you want to go for a walk? Do you
want to go for a ride in the car? That
These are all examples of things that influence how we
speak to dogs. Now, it's also clear that dogs can
understand that. If we look at what we name dogs,
overwhelmingly many of the most popular dog names have this
ability to do that kind of sing songy speech. So
(12:02):
lots of dog names end with why so Daisy, Lucy, Molly, Buddy, Charlie, Rocky.
I've just given you six three female names, three male
names that are the most popular puppy names. And there's
a reason for that that we in fact believe that
(12:23):
dogs can understand their names easier when they have this
kind of sing songy speech. So dogs can pick up
on their names, but dogs can also pick up on
other kinds of words that we're using in the environment.
I never heard anything like that that is really interesting
about the general area of dog names. Can you get specific?
I know you have dogs, How have you named your dogs?
(12:46):
What was your thought process? Yeah? So I love that question,
and I will say that I have had three dogs.
The first one was called Hoby. You can imagine that
ended and why. The next one was called Daisy. Our
third dog is called Lily. And literally two weeks ago
I started fostering a dog and that dog was given
to me with the name. So the dog arrived with
(13:07):
the name, and I was told this dog's name is
john and I immediately you can probably predict where I'm going.
I immediately changed that dog's name to Johnny. So it
was not my dog. It was a loner dog, a
temporary dog that I was fostering a puppy. But I
immediately started calling him Johnny because I wanted him to
learn his name, because that actually makes it easier for
him to be responsive to his future owner. So we
(13:30):
literally started calling him Johnny, and I am delighted to
report that he was adopted and his new owner is
going to keep calling him Johnny. After the break, Catherine
tells us how your dog may help you live longer,
and the difference between dog and cat owners. Owning a
(14:02):
dog seems to affect people's life expectancy, how long they're
going to live. What's going on there, So this is
one of the most practically important findings. And what the
research shows, in fact, is that owning a dog actually
decreases somebody's risk of dying in a given year about
(14:23):
twenty four percent, and the benefit of dog ownership is
actually even greater thirty one percent for people who have
already had a heart attack or a stroke, suggesting that
for people who are at a more medically fragile point,
the benefits are particularly strong. I will also note that
that study I just described is worldwide so this is
(14:46):
not a uniquely American finding or Western culture kind of finding.
It seems to be that there is a benefit, generally speaking,
from dog ownership. Are there other health benefits? People who
own a dog tend to have lower rates of of
blood pressure, they tend to have higher overall mood, So
it seems to be sort of broadly beneficial, not just
(15:07):
in terms of life expectancy, so yes, in terms of
life expectancy, but also very clearly there seem to be
benefits in terms of psychological wellbeing as well. And the
same thing is true if you own a cat, or
a fish or a hamster, right who, With due apologies
to the people who own a cat, you know, ferret, turtle, goldfish, whatever,
(15:28):
there actually seems to be a unique benefit to dog ownership.
So we actually don't see evidence for the unique benefits
of any other kind of pet other than dogs. It
doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but it means there is
not yet scientific data I can point to that supports that. Catherine,
you've described yourself as a dog person, proudly as a
(15:50):
dog person, but a lot of our listeners would call
themselves cat people. You want to tell us a little
about the difference between a cat person and a person
and how you contrast them. Sure, a great question, and
so I'll say a couple of things about that. And
I'll also say, in the interest of full disclosure, I
also have a cat. So in addition to having dogs,
(16:10):
I also have a cat and have had a cat
for a very long time. Different cats, but currently I
have a cat as well. So I'll say a couple
of different things. One, what the research shows is that
some of the unique benefits of having a dog maybe
due to things that we do with dogs that we
don't do with cats. So, for example, we walk our dogs.
Most of us do not walk our cats. So when
(16:32):
we talk about the benefits of dog ownership as opposed
to cat ownership, in all honesty, it may be that
dogs are kind of a proxy for exercise. So we
have a dog, and therefore we walk it. And so
it's really not that the owning the dog is the
good thing in terms of health or longevity. It's really
that walking is something we are much more likely to
do with dogs than cats, and that's where you're getting
(16:54):
the benefit. Relatedly, when you walk with a dog, you
get human connect action because overwhelmingly when you're walking with
the dog, you meet other people and they say, what's
your dog's name, how old is your dog? What kind
of dog is that? And so it also may be
that dogs are kind of giving us access to some
kind of a social network in a way that cats
do not. I've also talked about dogs as giving us
(17:16):
unconditional love, and frankly, there are lots of people who
would say, my cat does that for me as well.
And so people who feel that they have a connection
with their cat and their cat is responsive to them,
that their cat also recognizes their voice, recognizes their footsteps,
and so on. For people who have that sort of
a relationship with their cat, you may in fact beginning
(17:39):
similar benefits. Now, when you gave this lecture, the other
thing that jumped out to a lot of people was
the idea of jealous dogs, which you confirmed dogs can
get jealous. There's been research you want to tell us
about that I do, and that is a really interesting finding.
But what they did in the study act actually created
(18:01):
fake dogs, but realistic looking fake dogs, and they had
pet owners pay attention to, hold, talk to, etc. These
fake dogs, and that actually seemed to bother their actual dog.
This again is an example of something that is exactly
what you see in terms of babies, so very young babies.
(18:25):
If a mom or a dad is holding another baby,
babies will show jealousy. They'll really react to that. And
dogs seem to do exactly the same kind of thing.
They come over, they kind of insert themselves between you
and the even fake dog. So they are having a
very human response to having their attachment figure paying attention
(18:47):
to someone else. So dogs again very much like babies
in lots of ways. Well, Catherine, as you know, I
ran One Day University for fourteen years. You always like
to start with a joke, and you usually finished with
a joke. When you gave this talk, you finished with
a joke, and that might be a good finish to
this podcast. That is a great finish. Well, I'm actually
(19:09):
going to end with two jokes. You're gonna get two jokes.
So one, when I talk about the science of Happiness,
which is my I think most popular talk at One
Day University, I always described how dogs give us a
particular kind of love, unconditional love, which everybody of course knows.
And then I say, my husband and I have been
married for what will now be thirty years this August,
(19:30):
and I say, we have three kids, we have this
two dogs. We have the following deal. If one of
us leaves, the person who leaves takes the three kids,
and the other person gets the dogs. And that has
kept our relationship very strong. I've ended with that joke
for years, but about five years ago a man came
up to me, and I remember it vividly. It was
in a talk I gave in Dallas, and he said,
(19:50):
I have the perfect joke for you to end with.
And this is in fact the joke that I now
end with. And here's the joke. Imagine you come home
from work one day and you put your wife and
your dog in the trunk of a car. Then you
drive around for an hour. At the end of that hour,
when you open up the trunk, guess who's still happy
to see you. And that joke really sort of epitomizes
(20:12):
why dogs are so beneficial, because you know what, the
dog would be still really happy to see you. Catherine,
thank you so much for this. We really appreciate it,
and I hope I see you again soon. More dogs
is good for us all. That's the key takeaway. Thanks
for joining us here at one day University. Sign up
at our website one day you dot com to become
(20:36):
a member and access over seven hundred full length video
lectures from the world's finest professors. You can also download
our app. There you can learn more about today's episode
and watch Amherst Professor Katherine Sanderson's lecture on dogs and Humans,
as well as her talks on the science of happiness,
understanding intelligence, and more. Join us next time when we
(20:59):
talk about wealth in America. We have been struggling as
a society to make sense and figure out what to
do about wealth inequality since the late nineteenth century. One
Day University is a production of iHeart Podcasts and School
of Humans. If you're enjoying the show, leave a review
in your favorite podcast now. You can also check out
(21:20):
other Curiosity podcasts to learn about history, pop culture, true crime,
and more. School of Humans
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