Is your dog empathic? Developing a Dog Emotional Reactivity Survey

Owners from Hungary (N=591) and from Germany (N=2283) were asked to rate their level of agreement on a 1-5 Likert scale with statements about the reactivity of their dogs to their emotions and to other dogs’ behaviour. We created two scales with satisfactory internal reliability: reactivity to the owner’s emotion and reactivity to other dogs’ behaviour. In addition we also examined how anthropomorphism, contagious yawning, attitude toward the dog are related to emotional reactivity in dogs as perceived by the owner, we examined how owners rate dog pictures.