Why do people and animals tilt their heads when confused? - Big Questions - (Ep. 43) | Mental Floss

Sup, dogs! I'm Craig, and this is Mental Floss on YouTube

Today I'm going to answer Dan Height's big question, why do we tilt our heads when confused or pondering a question

Why do some animals seem to do the same? Let's get started? So most experts believe that head tilting is a method of sound localization

Basically, some sound waves are easier to understand than others. It's especially hard for us to understand a sound when we don't know where it came from

And when we tilt our heads, that actually changes how the sound waves amplitude and phase hit our ear

Is someone snacking on something? I think I hear someone snacking on something. We're making it so that the sound wave can reach our ear in a more horizontal way than it otherwise would

And it's also possible that it's now a deep, inbuilt reaction to being confused about things in general

As for why we tilt our heads when asking a question, that's a little trickier. It has definitely become a standard part of our body language, but there are maybe more to it than that

Like, tilting your head might also make you seem more likeable, rather than just talking like this all the time and staring at someone and not moving your head at all

A head tilt leaves the carotid artery on your neck vulnerable, so it sends a message to the other person that you don't consider them a threat

and they not gonna get all stabby on your carotid artery And according to social psychologist Dasher Keltner quote in the primate world tender warmth is signaled by head tilts Few studies have shown that people are perceived as more attractive while tilting their heads Women

are considered more attractive while tilting their heads slightly forward. And men are viewed as more masculine while tilting their head back a little. Sup, bruh. Dan also asks

why animals seem to tilt their heads in the same way as people. This is most commonly observed

in dogs. Of course, we can't know exactly why a dog does this, because if we ask a dog

just gonna tilt its head. Dr. Stanley Coren studied this phenomenon in 2013 by surveying

582 dog owners. He found that 71% of owners of dogs with large muzzles reported that their

dogs frequently tilted their heads while being spoken to. And dogs with flatter faces like

pugs and Boston Terriers had owners who only reported it around 52% of the time. So Coren

believes that dogs are trying to prevent visual obstruction. They're attempting to read the

emotion of the person who's talking, so they tilt their heads to be able to see over their

muzzle. Of course, since 52% of dogs with flat faces also did this, there are probably

other factors at play, like hearing