PSYCHOLOGIST Richard Wiseman’s taste for quirky science is well known, so his pet personality project should come as no surprise. In an online survey, he asked people to rate their pets for things like friendliness and neuroticism. Over half of fish owners said their watery friends had a good sense of humour. Fish apparently appreciate a joke more than cats, horses and birds – but not as much as dogs. Reptiles entirely fail to see the funny side of things, according to their owners.
The survey also asked people to evaluate themselves. “Fish owners were the happiest,” , “dog owners the most fun to be with, cat owners the most dependable and emotionally sensitive, and reptile owners the most independent.” There were big differences in personality, he noted. And here is the clincher: most people attributed the traits they possessed to their animals too. In other words, we see our pets as reflections of ourselves.
“It looks like people really can be considered as either catty or dogged”
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Just a bit of fun? You might think so. But in recent years a new breed of researcher has been investigating the complex relationship between people and their pets. They are trying to answer questions including: are pets like substitute children; do we manipulate them, or they us; and can the world really be divided into “dog people” and “cat people”? Some people are said to look like their pets, but this new take on human-pet interactions is even weirder: it turns out that we may think like them too.
Most of this research focuses on cats and dogs. Worldwide, they are by far the most popular pets – fish are kept in greater numbers but by fewer people. More than half of , for example. And in the UK, where around , a quarter of households own dogs and some 18 per cent are owned by cats.
Mini-me
Our two favourite species are very different, which isn’t surprising, given that dogs evolved from sociable pack animals and cats from solitary hunters. As one quip puts it: dogs come when they are called; cats take a message and get back to you. “Given the tight psychological connections between people and their pets, it’s likely that dogs and cats are suited to different human personalities,” says Sam Gosling at the University of Texas. Nevertheless, the intensity of our allegiances to one or the other is rather puzzling. But it might be explained if we don’t merely see our pet as another member of the household but, as Wiseman’s survey suggests, as a version of ourselves.
The idea that there are “dog people” and “cat people” certainly pervades popular culture. “Even individuals who don’t own and perhaps have no intention of owning a pet can identify themselves as a dog or a cat person,” says Gosling. And the characteristics we attribute to these identities reflect our perceptions of these animals. We tend to see dog people as direct, kind, faithful, utilitarian, helpful and team players. Cat people, meanwhile, are perceived as graceful, subtle, independent, intelligent, thoughtful and mysterious. Is there any truth in this?
A few studies have tried to find out, but with mixed results. , Gosling and his colleagues decided to test as many people as possible using the most reputable personality test available, the Big Five Inventory, which rated them on the five key dimensions of personality – extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to experiences.
Using an online platform, they managed to recruit 4565 participants who self-identified as a cat person, dog person, both or neither. “Our results suggest that there is some truth to the widely held view that, in general, the personalities of dog people differ from those of cat people,” says Gosling. What’s more, popular perceptions about their distinct personality traits aren’t far off the mark.
“Compared to cat people, dog people tend to be more extroverted, agreeable and conscientious, and less neurotic and open,” says Gosling. That means they tend to be cooperative, goal oriented and, perhaps surprisingly, more empathic and thoughtful than cat people. Self-confessed cat people, meanwhile, were more likely to say that they disliked structure and agendas. Compared with dog people, they took less interest in others and were manipulative (meow!). The biggest surprise was that they were also more adventurous and unconventional than dog people – something you might not expect of more neurotic, introverted types.
So, it looks like people really can be considered either catty or dogged. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that our pets’ personalities match our own. Instead, we might simply construct stereotypes about certain animals and then choose a pet that matches how we see ourselves. For example, many people associate cats with femininity and dogs with masculinity. And sure enough, research reveals that , while men are more likely to favour dogs. Moreover, dog lovers of both sexes see themselves as more masculine than cat lovers do.
This stereotyping idea has legs. We don’t just pigeonhole different animal species, we also have fixed ideas about certain breeds, especially when it comes to dogs. For instance, collies are seen as heroic (remember Lassie?), poodles as pampered and labradors as good-natured. Perhaps such perceptions influence the type of dog we choose to share our home with? An inkling that this might be true comes with the discovery that owners of dog breeds perceived as aggressive , a personality trait that is associated with a tendency towards anger, hostility and violence.
Turning this idea on its head, merely owning a certain breed of dog might influence how others see you. Lynda Mae and her colleagues at the University of Southern Mississippi asked people to look at (they weren’t actually the owners) and rate the people in the images on several personality traits. The same person was seen as friendlier if paired with a cocker spaniel, more intelligent when paired with a Jack Russell and more nervous if thought to own a chihuahua. The researchers put this down to “spontaneous trait transference”. In other words, we subconsciously endow people with characteristics we associate with the breed of dog they own.
That may be so but, as any pet owner will tell you, their furry/feathered/scaly companion really does have a personality. Such thinking was once derided in scientific circles, but in the past two decades the idea that personality isn’t confined to humans has become well established. So much so, that there is now a , which works by getting owners to answer questions about their dog’s behaviour, such as whether it tends to be lazy or aloof. Using this canine questionnaire, along with the regular Big Five Inventory, Lisa Cavanaugh at the University of British Columbia in Canada compared the personalities of pooches and their owners. She found . In particular, extroverts had extroverted dogs. And a study by Borbála Turcsán at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary found that the personalities of owners are than to those of their friends or spouses.
How the personality of a dog and its owner come to be matched is another question. Undoubtedly, specific breeds have specific characteristics, which people may be drawn to. But because dogs are also highly sociable, you might expect them to behave in ways that please their owners, so that similarities in their personalities develop over time. Wiseman’s survey supports this idea. He found that the longer people had lived with their pet, the more similar they believed its personality was to their own. And a large study of 14,000 pure breed and mixed breed dogs by Turcsán confirmed that a such as its owner’s personality and their shared interactions.
“Dogs may come to fit in with their owners, but surely cats never would?”
Dogs may come to fit in with people, but surely cats never would. If anything, don’t they manipulate us? Take a study by Karen McComb at the University of Sussex, UK. She found that cats have perfected a special purr that sounds like a baby crying. We find it hard to ignore, so are tricked into giving moggie what it wants. “Solicitation purring is just one of the methods cats can use,” she says. However, it now seems that the manipulation goes both ways.
Research published earlier this year delved into the idea that many people see their pets as substitute children and influence them in similar ways. It used the Big Five Inventory to assess the personalities of more than 3300 cat owners. They were then asked questions about their pet’s health, behaviour and weight. “We found that carers with higher neuroticism were more likely to have pets suffering from a range of issues, including obesity and stress-related illnesses,” says Daniel Mills at the University of Lincoln, UK. That is exactly what has been found in studies of parent-child relationships. These cats also tended to show higher aggression and more behavioural problems, again reflecting what has been found in children (and dogs) with more neurotic carers.
“We don’t know the causal link from a study like ours, but these results seem to suggest that the behaviour of more anxious owners is impacting on their cats’ well-being, perhaps because their worries lead to an overprotectiveness that can be unhealthy,” says Mills. Such owners were, for example, more likely to restrict their cat’s access to the outdoors. On a more positive note, owners who scored highly for conscientiousness generally had more gregarious and chilled cats.
It is sobering to think that our neuroticism might be rubbing off on the animals that share our lives. On the other hand, there seems to be an upside to our tendencies to choose and then mould pets in our own image. Cavanaugh found that people were happiest with dogs whose levels of openness, agreeableness and neuroticism exceeded their own.
It would appear that what we are really looking for in our furry friends is a mini-me. That is surely enough to make a goldfish smile.
