By Presentation of Pim Martens at the seminar ‘Happiness”
It is difficult to determine whether animals experience emotions in the same way as humans. It is not always clear what an animal feels, and you can easily be wrong in judging the nature and strength of their feelings. Yet in everyday life emotions are regularly assigned to animals. We might therefore assume that animals ‘ use ‘ their emotions to adjust their behavior to a certain situation Emotions are important for their functioning.
In this presentation we show how pet owners assign specific emotions to their pets based on facial expression, body posture , and sounds (barking, meowing, growling , etc.). We also present thow the emotions of the owner and pet synchronize, in other words, looking at whether your pet tunes his/her emotions to those of you (or vice versa, for example, being sad/happy or angry simultaneously).