Puppies may be better at garnering empathy than people are, in some cases, a new study finds. 
 
 People have more empathy for abused puppies and dogs than they do for adult humans who have been abused, a new study suggests. 
 
 However, empathy for abused children was about the same as that for puppies and dogs, the study found. 
 
 Researchers surveyed 240 college students and asked them to read one of four versions of a fictional news article about a brutal beating. The wording in articles was the same, except for the identity of the victim, which was either: an infant, an adult in his 30s, a puppy or a 6-year old dog. Participants then rated their level of empathy for the victim. 
 
 Participants had higher levels of empathy for the abused child, puppy and dog than they did for the abused adult, the study found. [See 7 Surprising Health Benefits of Dog Ownership] 
 
 The researchers had hypothesized that younger victims would receive more empathy, regardless of species. Instead, they found "Age makes a difference for empathy toward human victims, but not for dog victims," the researchers wrote in their study abstract, which will be presented this week at the American Sociological Association meeting in New York. 
 
 "The fact that adult human crime victims receive less empathy than do child, puppy, and full-grown dog victims suggests that adult dogs are regarded as dependent and vulnerable, not unlike their younger canine counterparts and kids," study researcher Jack Levin, a sociology and criminology professor at Northeastern University in Boston, said in a statement. 
 
 "It appears that adult humans are viewed as capable of protecting themselves, while full-grown dogs are just seen as larger puppies," Levin said. 
 
 The researchers said they suspect they would find similar results if they looked at empathy levels for other abused pets, such as cats. "These are animals to which many individuals attribute human characteristics," Levin said. 
 
 Women in the study were more empathetic than men towards human and animal victims. Studies show that women are generally more empathetic than men, Levin said. "The reason may be partially biological, given the role of females in childbirth and childrearing activities," he said. 
 
 Because the new study involved only college-age students, it's not clear if the results apply to people who are significantly older or younger. 
 
 Follow Rachael Rettner @RachaelRettner. FollowLiveScience @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com . ||||| People have more empathy for battered puppies and full grown dogs than they do for some humans -- adults, but not children, finds new research to be presented at the 108th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association. 
 
 "Contrary to popular thinking, we are not necessarily more disturbed by animal rather than human suffering," said Jack Levin, the Irving and Betty Brudnick Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Northeastern University. "Our results indicate a much more complex situation with respect to the age and species of victims, with age being the more important component. The fact that adult human crime victims receive less empathy than do child, puppy, and full grown dog victims suggests that adult dogs are regarded as dependent and vulnerable not unlike their younger canine counterparts and kids." 
 
 In their study, Levin and co-author Arnold Arluke, a sociology professor at Northeastern University, considered the opinions of 240 men and women, most of whom were white and between the ages of 18-25, at a large northeastern university. Participants randomly received one of four fictional news articles about the beating of a one-year-old child, an adult in his thirties, a puppy, or a 6-year-old dog. The stories were identical except for the victim's identify. After reading their story, respondents were asked to rate their feelings of empathy towards the victim. 
 
 "We were surprised by the interaction of age and species," Levin said. "Age seems to trump species, when it comes to eliciting empathy. In addition, it appears that adult humans are viewed as capable of protecting themselves while full grown dogs are just seen as larger puppies." 
 
 Interestingly, the researchers found that the difference in empathy for children versus puppies was statistically non-significant. 
 
 As for considering the opinions of 240 college students, Levin said it is common practice to use homogenous samples for studies such as his that center around an experiment. "Unlike survey research, experiments usually employ a homogenous sample in order to establish a cause and effect relationship rather than to generalize a large population," Levin said. "However, there is really no reason to believe that our results would differ very much nationally, particularly among college students." 
 
 While the study focused on dogs and humans, Levin thinks the findings would be similar for cats and people as well. "Dogs and cats are family pets," he said. "These are animals to which many individuals attribute human characteristics." ||||| Science 
 
 Vol. 348 no. 6232 pp. 280-281 
 
 DOI: 10.1126/science.aab1200 
 
 Evolution 
 
 Dogs hijack the human bonding pathway 
 
 View larger version: Download PowerPoint Slide for Teaching Look into my eyes. Changes in oxytocin concentration in a dog might elicit similar changes in a human and vice versa. PHOTO: VINCENT J. MUSI/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE 
 
 Tens of thousands of years ago, a wolflike predator gave rise to a more docile lineage, which soon became our trusted fireside companions (1). How did dogs become so embedded in human societies? Why do we feel genuine friendship, love, and social attachment in our relationships with dogs? On page 333 in this issue, Nagasawa et al. (2) reveal a powerful mechanism through which dogs win our hearts—and we win theirs in return. 
 
 Until recently, most research on human social and cognitive evolution concentrated on our closest primate relatives. Meanwhile, sitting at our feet was a remarkable case of evolutionary convergence. Inspired by developmental psychologists studying human infants, comparative psychologists began studying family dogs. It quickly became apparent that dogs have much more to tell us about cognition, and ourselves, than many might have imagined (3). This is particularly true when it comes to how dogs understand the social world. Even as puppies, dogs spontaneously respond to cooperative human gestures, such as pointing cues, to find hidden food or toy rewards. By contrast, great apes must have extensive experience with people to show similar skills (4). This use of social cues extends to a wide range of social gestures, including gaze direction and even the use of arbitrary communicative markers. Such abilities provide humans with a social foundation for word learning, another area in which dogs have been surprisingly adept (5). Incredibly, dogs' attention to social information leads not only to skillful problem solving, but also to the same socially mediated errors that young children make. For example, both dogs and children are likely to interpret eye contact as communicative, even in contexts when it is not (6). Thus, dogs exhibit many of the same cognitive flexibilities and biases that characterize our own species. 
 
 The domestication hypothesis suggests that humanlike tendencies in dogs are the result of selection for easygoing temperaments, which allowed dogs to interact with humans much like conspecific partners (7). Direct comparisons with wolves show that like great apes, but unlike dog puppies, wolves are only skilled with human gestures when heavily socialized. Unlike dogs, wolves—who do not expect humans to be cooperative social partners—do not look to humans for help when faced with an unsolvable problem (8). Wolves also ignore the ostensive social cues that lead human infants and dogs to make predictable errors in certain cognitive tasks (6). Therefore, the evidence to date suggests that the set of unusual traits found in dogs is not simply inherited from wolves. 
 
 If dog psychology was shaped by domestication, what biological mechanisms were affected? How do these mechanisms make possible an interspecies relationship that is surprisingly successful from an evolutionary perspective? The neuropeptide oxytocin has long been known for its role in affiliative social behavior, and the formation of bonds between members of a species. But can oxytocin facilitate social relationships between species? Comparisons of humans and dogs before and after they interact with each other have revealed notable increases in circulating oxytocin, as well as endorphins, dopamine, and prolactin, in both species (9). In addition, exogenous administration of oxytocin causes dogs to initiate more social contact with other dogs and humans (10), and allows dogs to tune into human social cues even more faithfully (11). These findings suggest not only an interspecies effect of oxytocin, but also the exciting possibility of a feedback loop—that is, shifts in oxytocin concentration in a dog might elicit similar changes in a human and vice versa—just as is seen when a mother bonds with her infant. 
 
 Nagasawa et al. report the strongest test yet of the idea that humans and dogs are locked in an oxytocin feedback loop that is mediated in part through mutual gaze—sustained eye contact between human and dog (see the figure). The authors observed 30 dog owners (24 female, 6 male) interacting with their dogs (15 females and 15 males of varying breeds and ages) and measured changes in both the dogs' and owners' urinary oxytocin concentrations before and after the two interacted. In previous work, the authors found that owners who report the highest relationship satisfaction with their dogs also have dogs who maintain mutual gaze with them the most (12). Nagasawa et al. demonstrated that dog owners whose dogs gazed at them the most had the largest change in urinary oxytocin after interacting with their canine companions (2, 12). Their dogs, in return, experienced a similar oxytocin increase, the magnitude of which correlated with that of the owner. When they carried out a similar experiment with wolves, there was no evidence of this type of relationship, even though the wolves were tested with the people who had raised them as pups. 
 
 But is there a causal relationship between mutual gazing and oxytocin release? Nagasawa et al. administered oxytocin to a new group of dogs before they interacted with their owners. Not only did the authors see an increase in the extent of mutual gaze between owners and dogs, but they also detected an increase in oxytocin in the dog owners as a result. Oxytocin administered to dogs increased oxytocin concentration in their owners through increased mutual gaze—however, this effect occurred only with female dogs. Collectively these findings mirror studies demonstrating that oxytocin administration to human parents can have parallel effects in their infants, as a result of increased affiliative parental behavior (13). 
 
 Evolution is notoriously thrifty, often recycling old mechanisms for new purposes. Nagasawa et al.'s findings suggest that dogs have taken advantage of our parental sensitivities—using behaviors such as staring into our eyes—to generate feelings of social reward and caretaking behavior. Because these processes are bidirectional, dogs themselves likely experience similar rewards, ensuring that the feedback loop is propagated. From an evolutionary perspective, the challenge for dogs may simply have been to express a behavioral (and morphological) repertoire that mimicked the cues that elicit caregiving toward our own young. Indeed, these juvenile characteristics of dogs are known to carry a selective advantage with respect to human preferences (14). Once dogs were capable of eliciting such responses in humans, interspecific bonds could be maintained through the feedback loop, which originally evolved to promote bonding between mother and child. Recent brain imaging studies have also demonstrated that when human mothers view images of their child or their dog, a common network of brain areas related to emotion, reward, and affiliation is activated (15). Thus, diverse aspects of our biology appear to be tuned into dogs and children in remarkably similar ways. 
 
 If they stand the test of time, the implications of these findings are far-reaching. In addition to providing clues about how dogs became a part of human history, the results also help to elucidate the proximate mechanisms through which our relationships with dogs may be salubrious. For example, the benefits of assistance dogs for individuals with autism or posttraumatic stress disorder—conditions for which oxytocin is currently being used as an experimental treatment—may arise partly through these social pathways. Thus, an important future challenge will be to probe the extent to which these findings generalize to diverse populations. In the meantime, Nagasawa et al. have provided more evidence that when your dog is staring at you, she may not just be after your sandwich.
– What's harder to watch: An adult human kicking a puppy or an adult human kicking another adult human? Science says: the puppy. A new study has found abused dogs—both puppies and grown-ups—elicit more sympathy than abused adult humans. Abused human kids, however, are equally sympathetic as abused dogs, LiveScience reports. "The fact that adult human crime victims receive less empathy than do child, puppy, and full grown dog victims suggests that adult dogs are regarded as dependent and vulnerable not unlike their younger canine counterparts and kids," says one of the study's researchers. The researchers at Northeastern University in Boston showed 240 students one of four news articles about a beating—each article was the same except for the victim, which was variously an infant, a puppy, a man in his 30s, or a 6-year-old dog. "We were surprised by the interaction of age and species," says a co-author of the study, per Science Daily. "Age seems to trump species, when it comes to eliciting empathy. In addition, it appears that adult humans are viewed as capable of protecting themselves while full grown dogs are just seen as larger puppies."