Since the 1930's, researchers have been actively studying and quantifying attachment in children. Since the late 1980's, those studies have tended to focus more on how those early childhood bonds shape lifelong behavior patterns and overall health and well-being, with an emphasis on secure attachment versus insecure attachment. Beginning in the 1960's, researchers began to take a bigger interest in attachment theory as it relates to our canine companions. Studying attachment in dogs really took off in the last twenty years and continues to be explored as humans build more complex relationships with their dogs, often with those dogs serving as child-substitutes for folks not pursuing traditional parental roles.
Let's begin with one of the early studies. In 1998, a group of researchers in Budapest looked at 51 dogs and their owners, putting them through the paces of a test normally run on parents and babies. Basically, there are three individuals in the testing room, the dog, the dog's owner, and a stranger. Researchers measured what happened when the owner left the room and the stranger stayed. Did you guess that the dogs behaved just as the babies had in the human studies? If you did, you'd be correct! All of the dogs, regardless of breed, age, or sex, showed distress when their humans left them behind and anxiety about being alone in a strange environment. They all sought comfort from the stranger as well in the absence of their owner.
Fast forward to 2015 and a study in Japan. Researchers measured oxytocin levels in dogs and their owners after they looked at each other for varying lengths of time. For reference, oxytocin is often referred to as the love hormone because it increases with social bonding and emotional attachment. What did the researchers find? They found that mutual eye contact between dogs and their owners triggers an increase in oxytocin in both the dogs and their people. This mirrors the research done on mothers and infants showing a surge in oxytocin when they gazed at each other. By comparison, hand-raised wolves in the study did not show this same boost in oxytocin from the mutual gaze, leading the researchers to conclude that dogs developed this trait through the domestication process and their co-evolution with humans.
Beginning in 2012, and continuing on through today, Gregory Berns at Emory University, has been studying dog brains using MRI technology. So much great research has come out of his work including the study that found that when dogs were exposed to five different smells on a piece of gauze while in the scanner (their own scent, the scent of another dog in their household, an unfamiliar dog, an unfamiliar human, and a familiar human from their household), all the smells lit up the dog's olfactory bulb equally, but the brain's pleasure and rewards center (the caudate nucleus) lit up the most when the dog was exposed to the smell of the familiar human. This once again demonstrates that strong attachment and emotional bond between dogs and their people even at the level of the brain.
Finally, in 2024, a research team in Finland found that dogs and their humans mirrored each other's heart rate variability when at rest. Most interesting was the fact that the longer the dogs and people had lived together, the stronger was their physiological bond. And for those owners who reported being anxious or worried in general, their dogs had a greater heart rate variability, just like their people did.
Clearly the results are in: We are incredibly attached to our dogs and they are just as attached to us, as if you dog lovers didn't know that already, right? But now, you can prove it to those naysayers telling you "it's just a dog." Nope, our dogs are family.
As always, if you have questions about your pet's behavior, you know where to find me.
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