Are you a dog or a cat person? It means a lot more than you think it does.
Credit: Wiki Commons.
The question of whether you’re a cat or dog lover reveals a lot about your personality and intelligence. A recent study of 600 students by Carroll University, Wisconsin, shows that kitty owners tend to be “non-conformist” and cleverer, while people with pooches were livelier and more extroverted. Although our feline friends came out on top in the brain-versus-brawn contest, 60 percent of the research group identified themselves as dog fans compared to a meager 11 percent for cats. The study’s lead author Prof. Denise Guastello talks to Metro about matching our personality to our perfect pet.
Should picking a pet be like trawling through a dating website to find our perfect match?
It could be a good idea but it would involve the measurement of each dog’s personality including all the individual variations. For example, my daughter has a very calm Old English Sheepdog puppy but some from that breed are very energetic.
So how can this study help people in the real world?
Perhaps in pet adoption. A survey could be developed based on the findings of this study and others to measure if a person fits the profile of a cat or dog person.
Women are sometimes termed cat ladies, so can parallels be drawn between gender and pet preference?
Females were more likely to report themselves as being a cat person but there was no gender difference in people reporting themselves as a dog person.
