Alarm or emotion? intranasal oxytocin helps determine information conveyed by dog barks for adult male human listeners

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Oxytocin, published as a randomized controlled trial.

After an incubation period, they had to evaluate the (1) perceived emotions (happiness, fear and aggression), that specifically created dog bark sequences conveyed to them; and (2) score the annoyance level these dog barks elicited in them.

Why It Was Studied

Barks play an important role in interspecific communication between dogs and humans, by allowing a reliable perception of the inner state of dogs for human listeners.

However, there is growing concern in society regarding the nuisance that barking dogs cause to the surrounding inhabitants.

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are young adults, men only.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study.

Because people in this Oxytocin study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

As a double-blind Oxytocin study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

Some participants received a placebo instead of Oxytocin, giving a reference point.

What Was Measured

In this study the researchers experimentally tested two separate hypotheses concerning how the content of dog barks could affect human listeners.

The researchers tested 40 healthy, young adult males in a double-blind placebo controlled experiment, where participants received either intranasal oxytocin or placebo treatment.

The subject headings attached to it are Dogs, Oxytocin, Emotions, Empathy, Fear and Attention.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Alarm, Attention-eliciting, Human and Interspecific communication.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Oxytocin.

Results are reported in around 3 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2024 (BMC ecology and evolution), a journal based in England.

More context: the Oxytocin compound page, all human trials.