Gregory Berns > Quotes

“Eventually, I came to the conclusion that the key to improving dog-human relationships is through social cognition, not behaviorism. Positive reinforcement is a shortcut to train dogs, but it is not necessarily the best way to form a relationship with them. To truly live with dogs, humans need to become “great leaders.” Not dictators who rule by doling out treats and by threatening punishment, but leaders who respect and value their dogs as sentient beings.”
― Gregory Berns, How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain

“As any dog person knows, this is a crucial test in evaluating someone’s character. Do they back away in disgust or do they lean into the doggie kiss?”
― Gregory Berns, How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain

“Normally, stress is lowest in the morning and rises steadily throughout the day. But the presence of dogs kept self-reported stress at their morning levels all day long. The researchers also found that the presence of dogs increased communication between workers.”
― Gregory Berns, How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain

“The real voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes but in seeing with new eyes. —Marcel Proust”
― Gregory Berns, Iconoclast: A neuroscientist reveals how to think differently

“The question of what a dog is thinking is actually an old metaphysical debate, which has its origins in Descartes’s famous saying cogito ergo sum—“I think, therefore I am.” Our entire human experience exists solely inside our heads. Photons may strike our retinas, but it is only through the activity of our brains that we have the subjective experience of seeing a rainbow or the sublime beauty of a sunset over the ocean. Does a dog see those things? Of course. Do they experience them the same way? Absolutely not.”
― Gregory Berns, How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain

“Humans are sloppy creatures. Like the proverbial bull in a china shop, we are oblivious to our body language. We bump into objects. We accidentally step on our dogs’ tails. We emit a constant stream of sounds with frequently inconsistent meanings. It is a wonder that dogs can pull anything consistent out of this barrage of signals. And yet they do.”
― Gregory Berns, How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain

“What is surprising, and frightening, is that even membership in secular groups may nourish conformist processes in the brain to the point that they spill into the realm of the sacred, in effect, making people more dogmatic about their values than they might have been on their own.”
― Gregory Berns, The Self Delusion: The New Neuroscience of How We Invent—and Reinvent—Our Identities

“When the Man waked up he said, ‘What is Wild Dog doing here?’ And the Woman said, ‘His name is not Wild Dog any more, but the First Friend, because he will be our friend for always and always and always. Take him with you when you go hunting.’ — RUDYARD KIPLING, JUST SO STORIES”
― Gregory Berns, How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain

“Early in the year, I had tried to explain to Helen that science is always changing. To which she asked, “You mean that this stuff is wrong?” “Some of it.” “Then why am I learning it?” Because the state says you have to, I thought. But what I said was “Science is a way of answering questions about the world around us. What you are learning is our current understanding of the universe. As we learn more, our understanding changes.” “I still hate it.”
― Gregory Berns, How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain

“We still need animals for research. But the vast majority of this research is currently for humans’ benefit. We need less of that and more research that directly benefits the animals themselves. Let’s start with dogs.”
― Gregory Berns, How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain

“But can you really trust someone who doesn’t have a pet?”
― Gregory Berns, How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain

“The defining trait of dogs, therefore, is their interspecies social intelligence, an ability to intuit what humans and other animals are thinking. Wolves do this to hunt prey. But dogs evolved their social intelligence into living with other species instead of eating them. Dogs’ great social intelligence means that they probably also have a high capacity for empathy.”
― Gregory Berns, How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain

“But if dogs have more capacity for social cognition than we previously thought, then we must reevaluate where they belong on the spectrum of animal consciousness.”
― Gregory Berns, How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain

“we found that the brain processes sacred values as rules—like the Ten Commandments. This was important because it explained why sacred beliefs are so resistant to change. They cannot be argued with, and they cannot be traded for money or other material things.”
― Gregory Berns, How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain

“also have a high capacity for empathy. More than intuiting what we think, dogs may also feel what we feel. Dogs have emotional intelligence. Just like people, if dogs can be happy, then surely they can be sad and lonely.”
― Gregory Berns, How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain

“Anthony Fauci made for a perfect villain: he was an erudite government scientist who was named on various patents (unrelated to coronavirus), and he had previously tussled with Judy Mikovits—the hero of the film.”
― Gregory Berns, The Self Delusion: The New Neuroscience of How We Invent—and Reinvent—Our Identities

“If they live with calm, consistent humans, they will pick up on those qualities. If they live with people who talk constantly, without saying anything, dogs will quickly learn that there is no useful information in their chatter. With their social cognition skills, dogs do not need an excess of jabbering. Patricia McConnell, the well-known animal behaviorist, has written extensively about the effectiveness of the less-is-more approach to dog communication. The takeaway is that humans should pay more attention to what their body language communicates than what their mouths say. Dogs’ sensitivity to social signals also puts”
― Gregory Berns, How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain

“Eventually, I came to the conclusion that the key to improving dog-human relationships is through social cognition, not behaviorism. Positive reinforcement is a shortcut to train dogs, but it is not necessarily the best way to form a relationship with them. To truly live with dogs, humans need to become “great leaders.”
― Gregory Berns, How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain

“What It’s Like to Be a Dog”
― Gregory Berns, How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain

“In fact, Callie showed evidence of more than reading our human intentions. She indicated her intentions. At dinner, she stood in front of the glass door leading from the kitchen to the back porch. She turned her head and looked at me. Then she turned back to gaze longingly outside. Back to me. Come on, I want to go outside.”
― Gregory Berns, How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain

“the most important characteristics of a great leader are clarity and consistency. Without those two qualities, people (and dogs) cannot know your intentions. Great leaders are also respected, not because of their position, but because of their inner strength and integrity. Leaders do what they say. Leaders listen to people, and although they may not always agree, they have respect for others. Great leaders help people.”
― Gregory Berns, How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain

“Did you guys hear there was a dog on the SEAL team?”
― Gregory Berns, How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain

“Of course, there was more to raising a puppy than basic training. If I had learned nothing else in the Dog Project, it was how to communicate better. Dogs come ready-made to soak up the social rules of the household. It was our human inconsistencies that made it difficult for them.”
― Gregory Berns, How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain

“The defining trait of dogs, therefore, is their interspecies social intelligence, an ability to intuit what humans and other animals are thinking. Wolves do this to hunt prey. But dogs evolved their social intelligence into living with other species instead of eating them. Dogs’ great social intelligence means that they probably”
― Gregory Berns, How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that living with pets can decrease blood pressure, cholesterol, and triglyceride levels, as well as alleviate feelings of loneliness.”
― Gregory Berns, How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain

“The defining trait of dogs, therefore, is their interspecies social intelligence, an ability to intuit what humans and other animals are thinking. Wolves do this to hunt prey. But dogs evolved their social intelligence into living with other species instead of eating them. Dogs’ great social intelligence means that they probably also have a high capacity for empathy. More than intuiting what we think, dogs may also feel what we feel. Dogs have emotional intelligence. Just like people, if dogs can be happy, then surely they can be sad and lonely.”
― Gregory Berns, How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain

“In answer to the question “What are dogs thinking?” the grand conclusion was this: they’re thinking about what we’re thinking. The dog-human relationship was not one-sided. With their high degree of social and emotional intelligence, dogs reciprocated our feelings toward them. They truly are First Friend.”
― Gregory Berns, How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain

“We love dogs, but what do they think of us? Even with just two dogs, a picture was beginning to emerge. The pattern of activations in the cortex suggested that they concocted mental models of our behavior, which might be due to mirror neuron activity. But regardless of the mechanism, the smell data showed that their mental models included the identity of important people in their lives that persists even when the people aren’t physically present”
― Gregory Berns, How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain

“dogs and humans belong together. We couldn’t exist without each other.”
― Gregory Berns, How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain

“According to the American Treeing Feist Association, the treeing feist, or mountain feist, existed in the southern Appalachians long before rat terriers were brought to America. While terriers were bred to catch vermin, feists were bred to hunt. And while squirrels are their primary prey, the feist will gladly hunt raccoons, rabbits, or birds. With longer legs than terriers, feists are built for silent speed. They live to tree a squirrel until its owner comes to catch it. The feist has a storied history intertwined with the beginnings of the country. George Washington wrote about them in his diary, and Abraham Lincoln even referred to them in a poem.”
― Gregory Berns, How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain