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Research Hit: The Smell of Stress Makes Dogs more “Pessimistic”
New research shows that the smell of human stress leads dogs to become more “pessimistic”
Are you serious — dogs become more pessimistic, kind of depressed, with the smell of stress from humans!?
Yes, I couldn’t help but report on this when I saw this research!
But this concept of social contagion is not so unusual.
What is social contagion?
As it says, it is when we are infected by social emotions — happiness can spread as can sadness, and stressed individuals subsequently can lead to others being “infected” such as in this study which showed that it made others anxious.
But not only that I reported here on mental disorders also spreading amongst adolescents:
Fascinating — so social contagion happens in many ways between human beings — surround yourself with happy people then!
