Dog breed perceived aggressiveness versus expressed emotions as interrupters of human cognitive performance

The effects of companion animal information on human cognition are still a neglected area of research in the human-animal interaction literature. Previous studies (Mangano et al., 2018; Schirmer et al., 2013), in which participants primed with a variety of dog-related stimuli based on perceived aggressiveness of various breeds completed a lexical decision task, showed that consistency between prime and target (e.g., negative prime/negative (unpleasant) target word) would elicit lower response time and increased accuracy in responses. Further, in several instances it was found that negative primes would result in longer response times and decreased accuracy of response for targets. The current research expanded on the previous studies in two ways: first, by using pictures of select breeds perceived as high or low in aggressiveness instead of the neutral drawings used previously, and second, by presenting animals expressing one of three basic emotions: “anger,” “happiness,” or “neutral.” After developing normative emotional data conveying information about both the perceived dog breed aggressiveness, and about the emotion of the animal, the compound primes so obtained were used in a lexical decision task. It was hypothesized that compatibility between the two levels of prime and the target (e.g., aggressive angry dog/unpleasant target word) would result in the fastest and most accurate responses, while incompatible prime/target combinations (e.g., non-aggressive happy dog/unpleasant target word) would result in the lowest and least accurate response, especially when unpleasant primes were paired with pleasant targets (i.e., aggressive angry dog/pleasant target word; Hypothesis One). Further, it was hypothesized that negative, unpleasant stimuli (e.g., aggressive angry dogs), would most likely lead to increased response times and decreased accuracy of response (Hypothesis Two). It was also hypothesized that an interaction between perceived dog aggressiveness and emotion expressed by the dog would be observed, and that polarized emotions like anger and happiness would heighten the perception of the perceived aggressiveness of the dog (Hypothesis Three). Last, it was hypothesized that the neutral emotion would not differentially affect response time nor accuracy of responses to target words (Hypothesis Four). Partial support of our hypotheses was found for response time and accuracy of response. Explanations of the findings are attempted, limitations of the study are discussed, and further research avenues are presented with the aim to improve our knowledge of how dog-related stimuli are cognitively and affectively processed, possibly influencing human performance in cognitive tasks.