CThere is someone who, looking his four-legged friend in the eyes, clearly feels the benefit, a wave of calming oxytocin. And who says it openly: confiding in your furry friend is better than opening up to your partner or a friend. But there are also those who still feel stupid, especially if there are other people around. There is no reason: talking to the dog is good, very good.
Talking to your dog, 7 very good (scientific!) reasons to do it more
Here are 10 good (scientific!) reasons.
1. The dog responds to our emotional tone
First, the dogs they respond to the emotional tone of our voices. When people talk to their dogs, they often do so in a higher tone than usual or in a sing-song voice that resembles “baby talk”, that way of speaking with children. Researchers call this speech “dog-directed speech.” And it turns out that dogs actually prefer it: Not only does this style of speech capture their attention more than normal speech, but dogs also choose to spend more time close to the person who uses it (says one study published in Animal Cognition).
2. They listen to us…
Even if they don’t understand exactly what is being said to them, dogs also understand the meaning of what you want to say. In fact, they process human language in the same brain regions used by people. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) procedures, it was found that when awake dogs and humans listened to human voices, the same areas of their brains lit up and both were sensitive to emotional tones in vocalizations. One says it research conducted by Attila Andics.
3. …and they are happy about it
The simple fact of hearing his big father’s voice makes the dog happy. This was discovered using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans: the reward center of a dog’s brain was found to be more responsive to the owner’s voice than to that of another person. It was thus understood that dogs who are particularly attached to their humans have a greater neural response to their voices even when they cannot see them. The study was published in the journal NeuroImage.
4. Talking to your dog releases oxytocin
Talking to the dog face to face and looking into each other’s eyes generates both a surge of oxytocin (often called the “love hormone” or “cuddle hormone”), which will make both of you feel good. This not only creates a “positive circuit mediated by self-sustaining oxytocin”, but also allows for an improvement in the connection between people and their pets. This was detected by a rresearch published in the journal Science.
5. It’s better than confiding in a friend
Unpleasant emotions? It may be better to talk to your dog than to a friend or partner. If some people feel more comfortable in confiding depression, jealousy, anxiety, apathy and fear to their pet it is essentially because dogs are non-judgmental listeners. They do not interrupt and will not deny the validity of what they are told, they do not betray nor do they enter advice mode, offering suggestions on what would be best to say or do. They simply listen, sitting tight and attentive, acting only as sounding boards. Research published in the journal Anthrozoös.
6. It allows us to name emotions
The presence of a dog to listen allows you to express feelings into words in a safe space. And the very act of naming or labeling emotions helps to reduce their intensity and helps us to be less emotionally “reactive”. Research conducted by Matthew Lieberman and colleagues.
7. It keeps us from dwelling on our troubles
And since the dog will not engage in a conversation about how his interlocutor feels, he will have less likely to ruminate on it and more likely to move forward. On the contrary, The dog’s natural instinct will be to encourage its owner in this directionencouraging him to play or cuddle, instantly improving the mood and cementing the friendship.
iO Donna © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED