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ANTHROZOÖS, 12(2), 1999 111
INTRODUCTION
ne of the enduring maxims of folk
psychology is that people and their
pet dogs tend to look the same
(Coren 1998). This belief is widely
held and has led to a variety of comic interpreta-
tions in films, on television and in advertisements.
While this issue may appear to be frivolous, there
are actually some empirically established reasons
why it might be true, at least in a weaker form —
namely that people tend to form a preference for
dogs that look similar to themselves, and this
preference may, in turn, affect their choice of a
particular breed of dog. to some extent.
The data that gives this idea a bit of credi-
bility comes from two sources. The first is the
extensive literature on interpersonal attraction
which suggests that, in choosing a mate or a
partner, while everyone may be attracted to
physical beauty, most people follow a matching
strategy by selecting partners who are at about
the same level of physical attractiveness as them-
selves (Berscheid and Walster 1978; Feingold
1988). For example, clients of a professional dat-
ing service were more likely to begin and contin-
ue dating when they were similar in physical
attractiveness (Folkes 1982). If this carried over
to selection of a canine companion, this would
suggest that people who are generally consid-
ered handsome or beautiful would tend to select
dogs that are also considered to be fairly comely,
while the converse would hold for people who
are fairly unattractive.
A much more specific mechanism that
might cause people to select dogs that have some
physical similarity to themselves has to do with a
mechanism known as the Mere Exposure Effect.
Basically, this means that people like familiar
objects more than things that they have not seen
before. It doesn’t seem to matter what that item
is; thus when people hear a word, see a person,
look at a painting, hear a piece of music, or
encounter anything else a number of times they
develop a more positive attitude toward it (Zajonc
1968; Bornstein 1989). For example, Moreland
and Beach (1992) had students rate photographs
of confederates who had attended a large lecture
class but never actually interacted with any of the
class members. They found that the more classes
a woman attended the more attractive and pleas-
ant she was perceived to be as a function of mere
exposure to her.
To link this discussion back to our selec-
tion of dogs, we are frequently exposed to the
sight of our own face in mirrors and other
reflecting surfaces. The mere exposure effect
predicts that we should develop a fondness for
our facial characteristics. Thus when Mita,
Dermer and Knight (1977) had students evaluate
photographs of themselves they tended to pre-
fer images that were left-right reversed, as their
face would appear in a mirror, while friends and
lovers preferred the true image, which is the
perspective that they are more familiar with. By
extension then, we might expect people to find
SHORT COMMUNICATIONS
DO PEOPLE LOOK LIKE THEIR DOGS?
Stanley Coren
Psychology Department, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
ABSTRACT
One tenant of folk psychology is that people tend to select or form a preference for pet dogs that
have a similar appearance to themselves. A sample of 261 women judged the desirability of four
breeds of dogs. Two breeds had lopped ears (English Springer Spaniel, Beagle) and two had
pricked ears (Siberian Husky, Basenji). Long hairstyles in women produce a facial framing effect
similar to lop ears while short or pulled back hairstyles produce a facial configuration more simi-
lar to prick-eared dogs. Consistent with this interpretation, women with long hair tended to pre-
fer the lop-eared dogs while women with the short hairstyles preferred the prick-eared dogs,
consistent with the folk belief. These results are interpreted in light of social psychological princi-
ples, namely the effects of familiarity and mere exposure on affect and interpersonal attraction.
All correspondence to: Stanley Coren, PhD,
University of British Columbia, Department of
Psychology, 2136 West Mall, Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada V6T 1Z4. Phone: (604) 822-6458.
Fax: (604) 822-6923.
E-mail: scoren@cortex.psych.ubc.ca
O
dogs whose faces had character-
istics that were similar to their
own to be more appealing.
While it is difficult to find
an appropriate metric to compare
a dog’s face to that of a human,
there is one characteristic which is
easily scored and might have
some predictive ability. If you look
at Figure 1, it is clear that a dog
with long, lop ears (1A) has its
face framed in a manner that is
similar to the framing effect
caused by long hair in a woman
(1B). A dog with pricked ears (1C)
however, is somewhat more simi-
lar to a woman whose hair is
shorter or pulled back, exposing
the ears and giving a cleaner,
unframed lower face (1D). This
could lead to the prediction that
women who habitually wear their
hair longer and over their ears
might prefer lopped ear dogs
while women with shorter hair
and exposed ears might prefer
prick-eared dogs simply due to
the mere exposure effect.
METHOD
Subjects
Testing involved a sample of 261 women stu-
dents enrolled at the University of British
Columbia. The sample was limited to women
simply because there is a wide variability in
women’s hairstyles, while in this region the vast
majority of men wear fairly close cropped hair.
The mean age of the sample was 18.6 years. All
were enroled in the psychology department’s
student subject pool and were naive as to the
purpose of the experiment.
Stimuli and Procedure
The test stimuli consisted of portraits of four dif-
ferent dog breeds—simply the head of each dog
looking toward the camera. The breeds were an
English Springer Spaniel, Beagle, Siberian Husky
and a Basenji. Each stimulus was projected on a
screen for approximately one minute, during
which the subjects were required to rate each dog
on four dimensions: how much they liked the
look of the dog, how friendly they thought it was,
how loyal they thought it might be, and how
intelligent it appeared to be, using a 9-point scale.
Following this, the women were asked some gen-
eral questions about themselves and their lifestyle.
As part of this assessment, they were asked to
look at a series of 12 schematic sketches of
women’s hairstyles and to indicate which one was
closest to the way that they most commonly wore
their hair over the past three years.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
For the purpose of analysis, detailed differ-
ences in hair style were ignored, and women
were divided into two groups: one with longer
hairstyles, that covered the ears (e.g. Figure
1B), and the other with shorter hair or longer
hair that was pulled back, so that the
woman’s ears were visible (e.g. Figure 1D).
A simple mean of the four ratings gives a
global estimate of the desirability of each dog and
the mean of the responses for the Springer
Spaniel and the Beagle give a rating for lop-
eared dogs, while the mean of the Siberian
Husky and Basenji scores give the approval rat-
ing for prick-eared dogs. As can be seen in
Figure 2, there is a small but significant prefer-
ence overall for lop-eared dogs over prick eared
dogs (6.15 vs. 5.09, F[1,259]=344.67, p<0.001).
Most importantly for the hypothesis here was
the fact that women with longer hair tended to
prefer the lop-eared Springer Spaniel and the
FIGURE 1:
Dogs dog with lop ears (A) have their faces framed in a manner that is simi-
lar to the framing caused by long hair in a woman (B). Dogs with pricked
ears (1C) have an appearance that is more similar to a woman whose hair is
shorter or pulled back, exposing the upright tips of the ears with an
unframed lower face (1D).
112 ANTHROZOÖS, 12(2), 1999
Coren
AB
CD
Coren
ANTHROZOÖS, 12(2), 1999 113
Beagle, rating these breeds higher on the dimen-
sions of likeable, friendly, loyal and intelligent.
Women with shorter hair and visible ears tended
to rate the Siberian Husky and the Basenji more
highly on these same dimensions (hair style by
ear shape interaction, F[1,259]=227.22, p<0.001).
This pattern of results is consistent with
familiarity effects on liking, given that the longer
hair on a woman forms a framing effect around
her face, which is much the same as the framing
effect caused by the longer, lop ears of the
spaniel or Beagle as opposed to shorter hair,
which provides unframed lines to the sides of the
woman’s face and allows her to see her own
ears. Please note that because of the nature of
these data, we must confine our conclusions to
dog preference, rather that to dog ownership.
Since all of the test subjects were university stu-
dents, the breed of their family dogs was gener-
ally the result of selection by their parents, rather
than by the tested individuals.
To further consider the hypothesis that
people prefer dogs that look like themselves, we
ought to be able to find other appearance
dimensions that can be scored in a relatively
unambiguous manner which could be also used
to confirm this notion. Somatype might be such
a dimension, with relatively slim people perhaps
preferring relatively slim dog breeds, or with tall
people preferring taller dogs. More difficult to
score, but still interesting dimensions that could
be explored might be facial shape and nasal
prominence. Somatype variables do have a the-
oretical advantage over hairstyle, since they are
not easily subject to voluntary control. Given the
fact that one can easily change their hairstyle it is
possible to argue that the direction of the
observed correlation runs, not from mere expo-
sure to one’s hairstyle to a preference in dogs,
but rather from a generalized preference for the
kind of facial framing effect associated with long
hair or lop ears. While not invalidating the con-
clusion that people look like their dogs, this form
of reasoning would suggest that a person’s initial
preferences may result in their creation of a par-
ticular look or style for themselves, and also in
their preference of dog breeds which have that
preferred appearance.
Obviously, we are not talking about a uni-
versal effect on preference. There were a num-
ber of women with short hair that preferred the
long-eared dogs and vice-versa. Coren (1998) has
pointed out that a person’s preference for a par-
ticular breed of dog may depend upon a number
of factors, including the image that the individual
wishes to convey, the purpose that the dog is
intended to fulfil and the personality characteris-
tics of the individual making the selection.
However, the size of the effect associating one
aspect of the general portrait of the individual
with the global appearance of the dog is large
enough in this study to be statistically reliable.
Taking this result at face value (no pun intended),
this might suggest that we have some preference
for dogs that have a general likeness that is
somewhat reminiscent of the appearance of our
own faces. This could provide some confirma-
tion of the folk psychological belief that we look
like our dogs to some degree.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was supported in part by a grant
from the Natural Sciences and Engineering
Research Council of Canada. I would like to
acknowledge the contributions of David Wong
and the staff of the Human Neuropsychology
and Perception Laboratory of the University of
British Columbia who assisted in data collec-
tion and coding.
FIGURE 2:
The mean ratings of the four judgements of dog prefer-
ence show that women with longer hair tend to prefer
lop-eared dogs while women with shorter or pulled back
hair tend to prefer dogs with pricked ears.
8
MEAN PREFERENCE RATING
DOG EAR STYLE
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Lop Pricked
WOMAN’S HAIR STYLE
Long Short
114 ANTHROZOÖS, 12(2), 1999
Coren
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Coren, S. 1998. Why we Love the Dogs We
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Feingold, A. 1988. Matching for attractiveness
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