Could a dog be an office’s best friend?

Could a dog be an office’s best friend?

Instead of leaving your dog at home in the morning, perhaps you should bring him into work – it might help your colleagues get along.

As part of preliminary research at Central Michigan University, experiments were carried out to see how dogs affected people at work. In the first experiment, groups were asked to come up with a 15-second advert for a made-up product. While every person had to come up with an ad, only one idea could be chosen per group. Some of the groups had a dog underfoot, while others had no doggy love at all.

After the task, the people had to fill out a questionnaire on how they felt about working with other members of the team. Apparently those people that had a dog show them affection, ranked their teams more highly on trust, cohesion and intimacy. (I’m not quite sure that the intimacy score is doing there, but that’s research for you.)
If you want to find out how a dog affected ‘the prisoner’s dilemma’, head over to The Economist and read about the Office’s best friend. Woof.