What Being a Dog Owner vs Cat Owner Says About You

Dr. Sam Gosling and graduate student Carson Sandy at the University of Texas at Austin, recently performed research in order to ascertain whether there were personality differences between so-called “cat people” vs those of “dog people.” The 4,565 volunteer participants were asked to self-identify as cat people, dog people, both, or neither. In addition, the participants also completed a 44-question assessment that measured the “Big Five” factors of personality used by psychologists to define human personality. Those Big Five traits are: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. To get a sense of the Big Five's scale, Gosling remarked that "In terms of personalities I would say Woody Allen is at one end of this spectrum and the 'Dude' from the Big Lebowski is at the other."

Due to the innate personality differences between dogs and cats themselves, it's not a stretch to imagine that humans who prefer the sociable, attention-getting behavior of dogs might differ from those folks who seek out independent, low-key cats as pets. And indeed, Gosling's research, "suggests there are significant differences on major personality traits between dog people and cat people."

Gosling's data showed that cat people were 12% more neurotic than dog people, but also more open to adventure, new experiences, art, emotion and held more unconventional beliefs. Dog people were more conventional, traditional and, “15% more extroverted and 13% more agreeable….[and] 11% more conscientious than cat people. Conscientiousness…is a tendency to show self-discipline, to complete tasks and aim for achievement.” Gosling’s study will be published later this year in the September edition of the journal Anthrozoos.

Dr. Stanley Coren of the University of British Columbia, recently performed a similar study in which he surveyed 6,149 people--3,362 dog owners, 1,223 cat owners (cats only), and 1,564 people that owned neither. He too used a personality assessment, but utilized the Interpersonal Adjective Scale that measures: extroversion, dominance, trust and warmth.

Coren found that people who own cats tend to be fairly trusting, but also, “relatively introverted...and also reasonably cool (low in warmth or agreeableness)...and low in dominance." Coren states that people who are "high on dominance are generally described as being forceful, assertive, persistent, self-assured and self-confident. They are the people who stand out in social gatherings as opposed to people who come across as being more timid, bashful, shy and unaggressive." The study also noted that cat owners are 1/3 more likely to live alone whereas dog owners tend to more often be married, live in a house, and/or have children.

Coren states that, “the general pattern that comes out of both studies is that dog owners are more social, interactive and accepting and cat owners (who own cats exclusively) are more introverted, self-contained and less sociable.”
 

You can take the “Big 5” personality assessment for free here, if you’re curious to see where you rank.
 

So, which are you—a cat person or a dog person? And do you agree with the findings?

Resources

1. Psychology Today

2. Animal Radio

3. Pets WebMD