Dog People Are Popular While Cat People Are Single

Source: Harry Whittier Frees photo -- Public Domain

There seems to be a never-ending debate about the differences between dog owners and cat owners. Sometimes this results in formal research by psychologists, such as a recent study which showed that dog owners are more satisfied with their lives than cat owners (click here for more about that). Well now it appears that the staff of high-powered statisticians who are employed by Facebook have turned their attention to this issue. A major advantage that they have is the size of their database — in their report they sampled 160,000 Facebook users. In their analysis they were able to confirm a number of popularly held stereotypes about the nature of dog people compared to cat people and they also uncovered some interesting, although not easily interpretable, additional findings. Facebook's motivation was simply because someone on their staff noticed that International Cat Day was on August 8 this year (Dog Day is on August 26 so I wonder what they will do for that).

The first issue that these data analysts turned to was the question of whether dog people or cat people are more popular. There have been several studies which have shown that dog owners tend to be more extroverted and outgoing than cat owners (click here for an example of that). That was an easy one to answer using the type of data available to them since it simply involved counting the number of Facebook friends that each type of pet owner had. They found that on average dog people have more friends than do cat people (about 26 more). Not surprisingly the researchers find some traces of homophily (which is the tendency to like people who are similar to you). Cat people are 2.2 times more likely to make friends with other cat people as compared to randomly chosen friends, but they also seem to like pet owners in general since they befriend 1.8 times as many dog people as might be expected. Dog people also show a similar trend, but not as pronounced. Dog-lovers befriend 1.8 times as many dog people as expected and 1.6 times as many cat people as would be expected by chance.

They next turned to the question of trying to assess the truth of the stereotype that a cat-lover is most apt to be an older, single, female. Here they find partial confirmation since it is true that cat people are more likely to be single than dog people. In the Facebook data 30% of cat people are single compared to just 24% of dog people. However this doesn't appear to be specifically tied to age or gender since younger cat-lovers, and male cat-lovers of all ages are just as likely to be single as older female cat-lovers.

One interesting bit of data which the analysts were able to extract comes from the fact that Facebook has a "feelings feature" where you can mark a Facebook posting with your current mood. For example, you might note "feeling excited" or "feeling blue" along with your status update. Here we find that the cat people are much more variable in their moods. They are more likely than dog people to post their current mood as being negative (tired, annoyed, sad, or emotional) but they are also more likely to say that they are happy or loved than are dog owners. In comparison dog owners are disproportionately more likely to express mostly positive emotions such as: feeling fabulous, blessed, proud, or excited. Highly variable mood states are associated with the personality characteristic which is called "neuroticism", so this does confirm some laboratory research such as those studies which I provided links to above.

Finally, the Facebook data analysts tried to flesh out a better picture the differences between dog people by looking aspects of their lifestyle. They conclude that cat people seem to favor more indoor activities in general and they like books, TV, and movies more than dog-lovers measured in terms of Facebook Page "likes". They then tried to explore this a bit more by looking at preferences for books, TV programs and films. They found that in general cat people are especially fond of fantasy, science fiction and anime. Cat-lovers seem to have a much greater leaning toward dark fantasy, in that they disproportionately tend to like books like Dracula, World War Z, and Stephen King books. In comparison dog people really like books about dogs (Marley and Me or Lessons from Rocky) but also romantic books and books about relationships (The Notebook or Water for Elephants). Preferences for movies and TV shows seem to follow a similar pattern. One interesting difference emerges here in that dog people seem to be more captured by TV shows about colorful and eccentric people. Thus dog owners are more likely to be caught watching shows like Entourage or Duck Dynasty than are cat people who are more likely to be found watching Doctor Who or reruns of Star Trek.

How to interpret this pattern of preference differences in dog versus cat people is not clear to a cognitive neuropsychologist like me, but I am sure that such data are interesting enough to start the wheels turning in the minds of personality and social psychologists and perhaps may generate more laboratory research on this issue. For now it simply provides more data about the differences between dog people and cat people which will stimulate more animated discussions over dinner or drinks.

Stanley Coren is the author of many books including: Gods, Ghosts and Black Dogs; The Wisdom of Dogs; Do Dogs Dream? Born to Bark; The Modern Dog; Why Do Dogs Have Wet Noses? The Pawprints of History; How Dogs Think; How To Speak Dog; Why We Love the Dogs We Do; What Do Dogs Know? The Intelligence of Dogs; Why Does My Dog Act That Way? Understanding Dogs for Dummies; Sleep Thieves; The Left-hander Syndrome

Copyright SC Psychological Enterprises Ltd. May not be reprinted or reposted without permission