Dog Personality traits and Human Personality Traits Alex wright Pennsylvania state university ’16 B.S. Psychology aew5296@psu.edu

Past research: Basic FIndings Little research has been conducted Most used Eysenck’s PEN survey to asses personality Positive correlation: An owner’s personality linked to a dog’s behavior Neurotic owners – overexcited and anxious dogs Emotionally attached/involved owners – dominant or aggressive dogs Submissive owners – dominant or aggressive dogs Owner personality has an effect on attention

Dog Behavior Dog behavior shaped based on the dog’s purpose Interactive and extraverted owners may obtain dog for exercise, showing, or breeding – results in less aggressive behavior; established dominance Reserved or territorial owner’s often acquire a dog as a guard or means of protection – results in aggressive and dominant behavior (JAGOE & SERPELL, 1996)

DOG PERSONALITY AND THE MATCHING HYPOTHESIS Had students rate themselves and their dogs in terms of personality Dogs were rated to a similar degree, suggesting their owner’s perceived them to have the same personalities Supports matching hypothesis Students with “personality disturbance(s)” more likely to have dog’s with behavioral problems Neurotic owners had dogs that showed displacement and overexcited behaviors. Psychological use and coping Inconsistent reward and punishment (o’farrell, 1997)

DOMINANCE AGGRESSION AND DISPLACEMENT Interviewed 50 dog owners Assessed personality of owner and dog Biggest complaint among owners – dominance aggression Dominance Aggression Attachment and involvement Submissive personality Reciprocity in personality Displacement Behavior Taking out emotions High states of emotion and conflict Inconsistent rewards and punishments (o’FARRELL, 1987)

ATTENTIVE BEHAVIOR Assessed owner personality via questionnaire Focused on open, agreeable, extraverted and neurotic traits Watched stranger-dog interactions Neurotic owners: gestural and verbal commands, dogs obeyed quickly, stared for a longer period of time at stranger Extraverted owners: dogs received more praise, stared at stranger for long period of time Agreeable owners: More time staring at ball than stranger (Kis, Turcsán, & Gácsi, 2012)

Other findings Study looked at Big Five traits among species after doing a cross-species comparison of personality traits Found neurotic and anxious personalities correlated with dogs who were more aggressive or displayed behavior problems – response to owner’s anxiety (Podberscek et al., 2005) Study done in Hungary and Austria Big Five and Canine Big Five Inventory Positive correlations in all Big 5 dimensions between owners and dogs (strongest for neuroticism and extraversion) Dogs more like their owners than to any given stranger (Turcsan et al., 2012)

Personality Traits in Dogs Research (Gosling et al., 2003) suggests that dogs exhibit the following Big Five Traits: Openness, Extraversion, Agreeableness Neuroticism. Conscientiousness not found More recent work has developed a personality scale specifically for dogs.

Which Big Five factors are present in the DPQ? Aggression Excitement Fear Attentiveness

Personality traits in dogs and huMANS Aggression Low Agreeableness Excitement High Extraversion Fear High Neuroticism Attentiveness High Conscientiousness High Openness to Experience

How did you Rate Patton? Woof woof!

Love attachment styles and pets Love Styles: Eros, Ludus, Storge, Pragma, Mania, Agape Purpose: Apply romantic relationship love styles to the human- dog relationship. Based on the original love attachment scale, a pet love attachment scale was developed The pet love attachment scale will assess people’s love style/attitude towards pets Hypothesis: Positive correlation between people’s human love styles and pet love styles Ex: Storgic love style with romantic partner, also Storgic love style with pet.